A great article in the Globe and Mail about wine connoisseurs. Basically a couple of movies (Bottle Shock and Judgment of Paris) are coming out about the 1976 Paris wine tasting session where Californian wines took the world by storm, at a time when they were frowned upon.
In the blind tasting many of the judges confused the Californian wine with French wines, much to their embarrassment. But the worst part is how vocal they were about it, claiming to identify classic French wines, but were actually Californian.
“Without the benefit of a glance at the label, wine connoisseurship is so much hot air and bluster.”
With my presentation (Sensory Perception and Mixology) just completed at Tales of the Cocktail this article could not be anymore timely. It just serves as a warning that no matter how good we think we are, in a blind tasting anything can happen because there are not external influences.
As Georg Riedel, head of the famous Austrian wine-glass company who's seen his share of boneheaded guesses by famous palates, once wisely and humbly told me, “A label on a wine substitutes 10,000 years of [tasting] experience.”
Good read, go check it out: Wine connoisseurs – I call them cons
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This month, Mixology Monday is on local drinks, either a drink that originated in your area, or one based on local ingredients. I doubt that any good, or interesting, cocktail has ever come from the city I reside in, but local ingredients are abundant. At this time of year blueberries are the fruit to be picked and I, with some help, picked 22 pounds of the these little berries. It is a job that requires patience, but these farm berries are nothing like the puny wild blueberries, so I'm not complaining.
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