How We taste

Wine tastings at weinfreaks.de are designed to assess wine quality. To this end, we describe and evaluate a wine's colour, aroma and flavour. Whilst abnormalities in colour rarely play a decisive role, the aroma and flavour are of particular importance.

The criteria for wine evaluation are not set in stone. As the world of wine and oenology evolve, so too do ideas about how wine should be assessed. Whereas, for example, cloudiness was previously generally regarded as a wine fault, it is now viewed in a much more nuanced way. Influences from the natural wine movement have also expanded the traditional understanding of wine to include flavour profiles that are still – often without any technical justification – associated with defects or faults in classical wine sensory analysis.

A challenging aspect of wine tasting is therefore distinguishing between unusual but distinct flavour profiles and genuine technical flaws.

We are open to modern wine sensory analysis and closely follow developments in the world of wine and oenology.

Wine can be tasted in different ways. A tasting can be conducted by a single person, or several tasters can come together as a jury to arrive at a joint assessment. The question of whether a wine is tasted blind or openly also changes the conditions under which a judgement is formed.

None of these tasting formats is superior in every respect. Each has its own context and enables a different way of engaging with the wine. For us, therefore, the aim is not to establish one method as fundamentally better than another, but to choose the tasting format according to the question we are asking of a wine.

A tasting by an individual allows for a direct and focused engagement with the wine. The judgement, however, remains more closely tied to the perception and experience of a single person. A jury, by contrast, brings together different perceptions and experiences. This can potentially help to compensate for individual misjudgements. At the same time, there is a risk that the tasters influence one another and that an apparent consensus emerges which does not necessarily lead to a better assessment.

Whether a panel tasting actually produces a more reliable judgement does not depend on the number of tasters. Several opinions do not automatically result in a better assessment. Émile Peynaud, one of the most influential oenologists and wine sensory scientists of the 20^th century, describes this relationship in his standard work Le goût du vin (Éditions Bordas/Dunod, 1980): “The unanimous opinion of several tasters in any case gives a feeling of greater security and may be considered more reliable, provided that there are no doubts about the quality of the members and the homogeneity of the group.” But: “Tasting is not a simple opinion poll, and the shortcomings of an assessment cannot simply be compensated for by increasing the number of respondents.”

In a blind tasting, the tasters do not know the identity of the wines. They know neither which producer is behind a wine nor which vineyard site or vintage it comes from. Their attention is initially focused on what can be perceived in the glass.

No taster can completely free themselves from the fact that the name of a renowned winemaker, a famous vineyard site, a great vintage or a high price can create expectations and thereby influence perception. Blind tasting removes this information from the immediate tasting situation. Colour, aroma and taste take centre stage. The wine is assessed without its reputation or origin dictating the judgement.

This is a significant advantage when the aim is to make an assessment of sensory quality that is as unbiased as possible. Blind tasting is therefore particularly suitable when we want to assess a wine as independently as possible of its name, origin and the expectations associated with it.

Blind tasting does not, however, make an assessment objective. Even without knowing the wine's identity, perception remains individual. Tasters may perceive different things, assign different weight to the same characteristics or arrive at different assessments. Blind tasting reduces one particular influence on judgement; it does not eliminate the subjective elements of human perception.

In our panel tastings, we always taste blind. Only the tasting leader knows the identity and order of the wines. They need this information to organise and conduct the tasting and therefore taste openly. Their assessment is reported separately.

In an open tasting, we know the wine and therefore also its context. Information about its origin, vintage, producer or style can be taken into account in the assessment. This can be particularly relevant when placing a wine in context and assessing its development.

A wine can be assessed not only by how it presents itself at a given moment. It may also matter whether its development is consistent with its age, origin and style. This is particularly relevant with mature wines, where information about origin and vintage can be important to the assessment. With young wines, knowledge of their origin and style can in turn help to put certain characteristics and their potential development into perspective. An open tasting allows such connections to be incorporated directly into the assessment. It is therefore particularly useful when the aim is not only to consider a wine's sensory characteristics in isolation, but also to assess it within its broader context.

At weinfreaks.de, we also taste openly. In our day-to-day work, this is even the norm. Consistent blind tasting would involve considerable additional effort: wines would have to be anonymised, decanted into other bottles and coded. With individual wines or smaller tastings, this effort often bears little reasonable relation to the additional insight it would provide.

When we taste openly, we are aware of the influences involved. Information can create expectations and thereby affect perception. We therefore do not regard open tasting as an equivalent substitute for blind tasting when the sole aim is to make a sensory assessment that is as unbiased as possible. Rather, it serves a different purpose.

At weinfreaks.de, a particular form of collaboration between two tasters is what we call the four-eyes principle. It differs from a jury tasting in that it does not bring together a larger group of tasters to arrive at a joint assessment. Instead, the focus is on two tasters and the mutual checking of their perceptions.

Ideally, the four-eyes principle follows an initial tasting by a single person. The initial taster and a second taster first engage with the wine independently and form their own assessment. They then exchange their impressions and, where possible, arrive at a joint assessment.

The method thus combines the initially individual perception of one taster with a second assessment. This can increase the reliability of a judgement. If the two assessments largely coincide, this is an indication that the judgement is not based solely on an individual perception.

The four-eyes principle only works meaningfully, however, if both tasters contribute their own perceptions. If one gives in to the other too quickly, the second assessment does not provide an additional check but merely confirms the first judgement.

For this reason, disagreement between two tasters is not a flaw that must be resolved at all costs. If the two cannot agree on a joint assessment, the difference in perception is not eliminated by one taster overriding the other or by calculating an average. In such cases, we record two individual assessments instead of a joint one. A numerical consensus would not be a genuine consensus. Particularly when two experienced tasters assess the same wine differently, it can be useful to make this difference visible. It may be attributable to different perceptions, different weighting of individual characteristics, or simply to the fact that a wine does not necessarily leave the same impression on every taster.

We do not regard the four-eyes principle as a guarantee of a correct judgement, but as a means of increasing the quality and reliability of our assessments.

We do not regard blind and open tastings, or individual and panel tastings, as competing methods. They place different emphases on the tasting process and can therefore provide different insights into a wine.

Blind tasting helps us assess a wine as independently as possible of its name, origin and the expectations associated with it. Open tasting allows us to consider it within its own context and to incorporate information about its origin, vintage, producer and style into the assessment. Individual tasting allows for an independent and focused perception. A panel can bring together several qualified perceptions. The four-eyes principle provides an opportunity to critically examine an assessment through a second independent perception.

The form we use therefore depends on the particular question at hand. Where the primary aim is to make a sensory assessment that is as unbiased as possible, blind tasting may be the appropriate method. Where the aim is to place a wine within the context of its origin, vintage or style, open tasting can provide additional insights. Where the focus is on validating an individual assessment, involving a second taster can be useful.

Where appropriate, the different methods can also be combined. Particularly in extensive thematic tastings that extend over longer periods and involve considerable organisational effort, it can be valuable to examine a wine under different conditions.

The results of different tasting formats remain, in principle, separate assessments. We do not combine them into an ostensibly more objective overall judgement. Different tasting conditions can lead to different perceptions – and these differences are not necessarily a methodological error that should be eliminated through mathematical aggregation.

No tasting format makes a wine assessment objective. Sensory perception remains a human process and is therefore always susceptible to error. Even experienced tasters can arrive at different assessments, and a panel does not protect against misjudgements either.

For us, methodological rigour therefore does not mean claiming that any tasting method is infallible. It means understanding the possibilities and limitations of each method and using it deliberately.

A serious approach to wine tasting therefore does not require choosing a single supposedly correct method. It requires the ability to choose the conditions of a tasting in a way that does justice to the particular question at hand – and to interpret the resulting assessments accordingly.