Blind Wine Tasting

Last night we had some friends over for blind wine tasting of various Cabernet Sauvignons. Everyone brought a bottle and we had an independent observer (thanks Josan!) label the bottles and wrap them into paper bags, so that it was impossible to tell, which was which. The wines ranged from a low $2 "two-buck-chuck" Charles Shaw to a $25 bottle from Joullian Vineyards. Everyone ranked the wines from best to worst. In addition, we tried to identify the cheapest and the most expensive bottles.

After several rounds of comparing the wines, we collected all rankings and determined the order by simply adding ranks. Overall, the group found it easy to agree on the worst wine (D, with a standard deviation of only 0.46) and the best wine (B, with stddev of 0.8).

We then proceeded to reveal the bottles from worst to best. The first surprise was that the lowest ranked bottle (D) was actually the second most expensive, Sterling Vineyards Napa 2005 Cabernet Sauvignon. We were even more surprised that the bottle of Charles Shaw did not show up in the bottom few, so much so, that we started to suspect that we had simply forgotten to include it in the tasting. I am sad to report that our group unanimously voted Charles Shaw as the best wine of the pack, a very unexpected result, that caused much laughter and raised the question just how much we know about wine.

The following table shows the detailed results, columns are wines from best to worst, rows are the individual rankings. We note that price seems to have no influence on rank, the most expensive bottle being smack down the middle and the total price of the top 4 being very close to that of the bottom 4.

wine	B	H	G	C	E	A	I	F	D
	2	1	5	3	4	8	6	7	9
	1	2	5	3	8	4	6	7	9
	1	3	2	5	6	7	4	8	9
	1	5	3	6	4	9	7	2	8
	1	2	4	7	5	3	8	6	9
	3	1	2	6	7	5	4	9	8
	1	3	8	4	5	6	2	7	9
	1	2	5	6	3	4	7	9	8
	2	1	6	3	4	5	7	8	9
	3	1	2	6	7	4	8	5	9
sum	16	21	42	49	53	55	59	68	87
stddev	0.8	1.22	1.89	1.45	1.55	1.86	1.87	1.99	0.46
rank	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9
price	1.99	14.99	11.99	8.99	24.99	7.99	4.99	7.99	19.99

Finally, here are the details for each wine. The images of labels are very close to what we had last night, but they may be from a different year/grape.

B - Charles Shaw 2005


H - Chateau St. Michel 2004

I couldn't find an image of this one.

G - Robert Hall Paso Robles 2005


C - Bogle 2005


E - Joullian Carmel 2002


A - Solaris 2005


I - Barefoot


F - Robert Mondavi Private Selection 2006


D - Sterling Vinyards Napa 2005