Articles, Essays, and Resources on Wine & Blind Tasting

By Dr Neel Burton — Psychiatrist, philosopher, and wine writer; Fellow of Green Templeton College, University of Oxford; author of over twenty books.

Wine is one of the most complex of all beverages: the fruit of a soil, climate, and vintage, digested by a fungus through a process guided by the culture, vision, and skill of an individual man or woman.

When you uncork a bottle of mature fine wine, what you are drinking is the product of a particular culture and tradition, a particular soil, a particular climate, the weather in that year, and the love and labour of people who may since have died. The wine is still changing, still evolving, so much so that no two bottles can ever be quite the same. By now, the stuff has become incredibly complex, almost ethereal. Without seeking to blaspheme, it has become something like the smell and taste of God.

Do you drink it alone? Never. The better a bottle, the more you want to share it with others … and that is the other incredible thing about wine, that it brings people together, makes them share with one another, laugh with one another, fall in love with one another and with the world around them.

This page brings together my manuals, essays, and resources on wine and blind tasting.

Wine Blind Tasting

Why Blind Taste Wine — The Surprising Way to Taste Wine More Honestly—and Enjoy It More

How to Host a Blind Wine Tasting — Everything You Need for a Memorable Evening of Wine, Conversation, and Discovery.

The Perception of Wine — The Physiology, Psychology, and Philosophy of Wine Tasting

How to Become a Better Blind Taster — How to Improve Your Blind Tasting—for Examinations, Competitions, or Simply the Love of Wine

Free Blind Wine Tasting Resources — Blind Tasting Sheets, Crib Sheets, and Colour Wine Maps

Wine & Culture

Why Wine Matters — What Wine Reveals About Being Human

The Real Meaning of Terroir — The Long History of One of Wine’s Greatest Ideas

Dionysus: God of Wine, Ecstasy, and Liberation — Why the Greeks Thought Wine Deserved a God

Sex, Drugs, and Religion — A History of the Orgy

The Wine-Dark Sea: Wine in Homer’s Odyssey — What the Odyssey Can Teach Us About Wine—and Drinking

The Roman Dinner Party — What the Romans Ate, Drank, and Did Between Courses

The Measure of Pleasure

Wine Ratings: Can Wine Be Reduced to a Number? — What Is Beethoven’s 9th Out of 100?

Epicurus and the Arithmetics of Pleasure — Learning to Master the Hedonistic Calculus

Meet Aristippus: The Ultimate Hedonist — The Freest and Funniest Philosopher of Antiquity

Why Snobbery is Self-Defeating — The Psychology of Snobbery

Favourite Wine Regions, Recently Explored

The Wines of Naoussa — Discover Greece’s Xinomavro Heartland of Wine, Myth, and History

The Wines of Santorini — Assyrtiko, Ancient Vines, and a Fragile Island Heritage

The Wines of Lanzarote — The World’s Most Improbable Wine Region

The Wines of the Valais and Switzerland — Welcome to the Real Northern Rhône

Continue Exploring

Explore more subjects in the Index Scriptorum.

See the Bigger Picture