2005 Concha y Toro Cabernet Sauvignon Don Melchor

Community Tasting Note

4 comments have been posted

• Comment posted by Rollerball:

  12/9/2019 11:57:00 AM - By blind (vs. double blind) do you mean you knew the wines beforehand but not which was which?

• Comment posted by AllRed:

  12/9/2019 12:12:00 PM - Hi, Rollerball.
  
  By double blind, I mean that I did not know the wine's identity. This bottle was ours, so I knew it would appear in one of the flights somewhere, I just didn't know where, so I tasted it "blind."
  
  For this particular group, each taster brings a bottle in a brown bag, which we group roughly from light to heavy. Then the host often times mixes things up a bit, so even if you were to bring a "lighter red" and set it at the very front of the line, it would most often get mixed in somewhere in the first flight as opposed to being the first wine in the first flight. We occasionally have themes, e.g., foreign cab sauv, but that would be our only advance knowledge of what is being tasted. I still consider that double blind since we don't know anything but the variety, excluding one country.
  
  So once the wines are arranged/randomized, we break the bottles into manageable flights (no more than six to a flight) and spend 20 minutes or so tasting the flight. We then open group discussion on the wines and flight at large, before narrowing it down to the first wine of the flight. We have discussions about that wine and we make our guesses as to what it is and it is then unveiled. We then move on to the second wine in the flight and so on.
  
  It's fun, especially because we learn each others' palates and when someone guesses correctly, they explain what tipped them off so we learn what clues to look for. It's a fun, education and humbling exercise.
  
  Hope this all makes sense and answers your questions.
  
  Cheers!

• Comment posted by Rollerball:

  12/9/2019 4:34:00 PM - Yes, very helpful! We have a few versions of blind tastings similar to what you're doing here. I googled blind/ double blind to see what I could learn about how others use the terms.
  
  https://wineanorak.com/understanding.htm claims that "'Single blind' is when the list if wines to be tasted is known, but not the order; 'double blind' is when nothing is known about them at all."
  
  Outside the wine context single/double/triple blind seems to refer to how many of the parties (subjects/ researchers/ observers) know which is which: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blinded_experiment.

• Comment posted by Rollerball:

  12/9/2019 4:34:00 PM - Here's what Wine spectator has to say:
  At Wine Spectator, all new-release wines are evaluated in blind tastings. However, there are varying degrees of blind. The most extreme is “double-blind,” which generally means that the taster has no information whatsoever about the wine in his or her glass.
  In our experience, double-blind tasting is inadequate for proper evaluation, because it eliminates context. A fine wine will deliver delicious and complex flavors, but it can also convey information about its growing season, grape variety and origin—in short, its terroir.
  
  This is why Wine Spectator employs a “singleblind” methodology. Our tasters know general aspects of the wine that provide context, which include vintage, appellation and grape variety where appropriate, but never the name of the producer or the wine’s price. The goal is to arrive at the appropriate balance: enough information to contextualize the wine, but not so much information that “imaginary references” begin to distort judgment.
  
  Rollerball Comment: I understand the need to know the varietal. But knowing the vintage must induce bias: a vintage that's been touted as incredible or horrible could be a self-fulfilling prophesy in non-vintage-blind scoring. Same with appellation: all I'm telling you is this is from the La Tache appellation, now go taste it blind!