The Science of Tasting

Tasting skill is integral to the sommelier profession. Buying positions necessitate analysis of value through tasting, and positions on the floor require effective communication of a wine’s qualities. Happily, tasting is a learned skill; it is honed and practiced rather than innate. Inexperienced tasters may find every avenue of excuse—physiological and otherwise—to deter advancement, and progress may seem frustratingly slow in the beginning. Throughout their course of study, however, sommeliers will taste thousands of wines, and with some work a useful understanding of the language of taste eventually emerges. And when learning the language of taste, tasting blind is an important practice.

Why? One notable (and highly visible) importer disregards the practice, diminishing it as “irrelevant prowess…hardly a skill that will be put to use in a wine career,” before backpedalling slightly, and admitting that it may be as useful as playing scales—though hardly the equivalent of real music. Of course, blind tasting is frequently less helpful to those with wine (stories) to sell, but enormously important to those who buy based on innate quality. Blind tasting allows one to interpret quality absent the noise of reputation. Expectation changes the experience. When blind tasting, one learns how to describe a wine as it is, not as it should be. Of course, a good sommelier understands the classic wine profiles of the world, and therefore can link what appears in the glass to an appropriate, logical conclusion. Learning to aptly describe wine, in a way that can be meaningfully conveyed to others, is the core value of blind tasting. The conclusions—grape variety, region, vintage—are just logical aftermath.

This is not to suggest that all tasting exercises should be blind. In the