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How to improve your blind tasting—for examinations, competitions, or simply the love of wine

six wine glasses on a table (wine blind tasting)
Blind tasting begins not with answers but with passion and attention.

In Why Blind Taste Wine, I argued that blind tasting frees us from our preconceptions, obliging us to attend to the wine itself rather than the noise surrounding it. This temporary suspension of preconceptions—what the ancient Skeptics called epoché—is, I think, a pre-requisite for learning about wine.

Here I want to ask a different question: how do we become better at blind tasting?

Many people first encounter blind tasting through examinations and competitions. Others simply want to deepen their understanding of wine. Whatever your motivation, it’s all too easy to lose sight of why you embarked on the journey in the first place—not to punish yourself or put yourself through an obstacle course, but to learn more deeply about the thing you love. Blind tasting, remember, is a means, not an end in itself—not to pass examinations or conquer competitions, but to commune with the world.

There can be no shortcut to expertise. Nor is there any substitute for a long and loving relationship with wine. No examination technique, tasting grid, or mnemonic can replace years spent tasting attentively, visiting wine regions, talking to growers and vintners, reading widely, and, above all, drinking good wine in good company.

Practice is indispensable, but not all practice is equally valuable. Resist the temptation simply to reinforce your strengths. The quickest way to improve is to identify your weaknesses and work on those.

Blind tasting is less about memorising and recalling possibilities than distinguishing between plausible alternatives. Focus on tasting and thinking accurately, not on getting it right. Many wines, remember, are inherently misleading. If you’re a good taster, you’re a good taster, and no Furmint can take that away from you.

Above all, immerse yourself in wine. Attend as many tastings as you can. Visit wineries and wine regions. Talk to growers, vintners, and other wine lovers. Read books, magazines, and the wine press. Every encounter adds another layer of understanding.

The single most important thing is to find or form a dedicated study group. Aside from the purely social aspects, the benefits of a study group include: imposing structure and discipline, sharing knowledge and experiences, shaping indistinct impressions, uncovering blind spots, and, last but not least, dividing expenses.

I have known generations of blind tasters at Oxford, and the best among them were always those who lived and breathed wine—often, it has to be admitted, at the expense of their studies. Nothing can make up for love, or madness.

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Here I have focused on the bigger picture, partly to restore perspective and remove any anxiety. The details—examination strategies, competition tactics, tasting grids, and so on—are better left to The Concise Guide to Wine and Blind Tasting, which draws on many years of teaching, judging, competing—and, mainly, drinking.

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 A great wine is a lot more than a number.

A wine rating is a summary of the appraisal of a wine by one or more critics—most famously Robert Parker, whose 100-point scale came to dominate the wine world from the 1970s until his retirement in 2019. Other systems remain in use, while many websites now invite wine lovers to contribute their own ‘community ratings’.

In theory, a numerical score merely supplements a tasting note. In practice, the tasting note—if it even exists—is often ignored, and the wine reduced to a single headline number.

This has obvious advantages. Ratings convey information clearly and simply, especially to novices. Assuming the tasting has been conducted under rigorously blind conditions, they reflect quality rather than price or reputation. They encourage producers to improve, and reward those who do. Wines awarded more than 90 points are considerably easier to sell, while those in the high nineties can become cult wines almost overnight. Château Tirecul la Gravière, in Monbazillac, became an overnight sensation after Robert Parker awarded 100 points to its 1995 Cuvée Madame.

Yet ratings can be criticised on three grounds: concept, procedure, and consequences.

The first objection, then, is conceptual. However objective or scientific a score may appear, it remains an expression of human judgement.

Consider these two reviews of the same wine:

  1. The greatest Cantenac Brown I have ever tasted, the 2010 is one for the ages.
  2. V, v sweet, And alcoholic. And a bit drying on the end—a sort of right-bank Margaux. What’s the point?

The first is from Robert Parker. The second, Jancis Robinson.

What is Beethoven’s Ninth out of 100?

What is the Sistine Chapel out of 100?

How much do you love your partner out of 100?

A great wine, too, is more than an object of measurement. It is the expression of a place, a season, and the care and attention of those who made it. It can certainly be judged, but not reduced to a single number.

Scoring wines might be compared to ranking contestants in a beauty pageant. Like the contenders in the pageant, the wines are often very young, and scores cannot fully account for the delights and disappointments that are yet to come. In any case, the prettiest boy or girl is probably not on the stage but sitting at home buried in War and Peace. Many of the most hallowed producers shun competitions, mainly, I think, because they have little to gain and much to lose. Artisan winemakers, who make the most soulful wines, do not have the time or means to enter competitions.

The second objection is procedural. Competition scores are influenced not only by personal preferences and prejudices, but also by the context and conditions of the tasting, and, in a panel, by the group dynamics, with junior judges exquisitely sensitive to every ‘um’ and ‘aah’ from the more distinguished panel chair. The outcome of this process might be of existential import to the producer, who has toiled for a year, indeed, several years, to make his or her wine, but in fact reflects no more than a few seconds of tasting with no or very little time for discussion and debate.

There is also a financial incentive to dish out medals, which invite further paid entries and increase sales of medal stickers. As a result, there has been a devaluation of wine scores over the years—so that many wineries would now hesitate to publicise a score below 90.

The third objection concerns consequences. The highest-rated wines often become objects of speculation, traded like financial assets rather than uncorked and enjoyed around a table. 

More subtly, ratings favour wines that make an immediate impression on a fatigued palate: concentrated, powerful, and rich in fruit, oak, and tannin. More restrained wines—those that whisper rather than shout and speak more faithfully of place—are liable to be undervalued. This contributed significantly to the homogenisation—or ‘Parkerization’—of wine styles during the late twentieth century.

Wine ratings have played an important role in the rise of wine culture, but their grip seems to be loosening, if not quite fading, as consumers become more experienced and knowledgeable—and as wine scores tend asymptotically towards 100.

To me, a score of 98 is a signal for caution.

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If you enjoyed this article, you might also enjoy my book The Concise Guide to Wine and Blind Tasting, which explores not only how to taste wine, but why it matters. Practical yet thoughtful, it will help you taste with greater confidence—and greater pleasure.

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