History of Blind Tasting

People have been judging wine for a long time. There’s no official record of it, but it’s safe to say that someone in ancient Georgia, where it’s thought wine was first made around 6000 BC, argued that the 5999 BC vintage was better than the previous year. 
 
The earliest record of a competitive wine tasting is by Norman poet Henry d’Andeli, whose 1224 poem La Bataille des Vins (Battle of the Wines) tells the story of a tasting organized by French King Philip Augustus. Over 70 wines from around Europe were judged and the winner was reportedly a dessert wine from Cyprus called Commandaria, which is still being made today. 
 
Scientific research has shown that when stripped of price tags and labels, people have a great deal of trouble discerning the quality of a wine. In a study where subjects were given two glasses of wine, people could only identify the more expensive wine 50% of the time – no better than a coin flip. In another study, where researchers used an MRI to scan the pleasure centers in their test subject’s brains as they tasted wine, people enjoyed the wines more when they were told the wine they were drinking was more expensive. 
 
Geography also plays a role. Researchers in another study presented subjects with three glasses of wine labeled France, California, and Texas. The wine labeled France was overwhelmingly chosen as the best even through the three wines were all the same Texas wine. 
 
Wine is subjective. That’s why the best way to understand what you like is to taste blind. By removing any possibility for biases, blind tasting levels the playing field and allows people to discover what they like or don’t like in a wine. Besides, it’s fun!