There is only one reason for blind tasting of wines: don’t let the label blind your mind.

One day I went to a champagne dinner of Torres and one of their management was talking with guests. He mentioned wines recommended by Wine Press were blind tasted unlike a bunch of advertorials of those finely printed fashion magazines. It is meaningless to buy advertised wines.

To a professional magazine that pursues integrity and impartiality, his comment is a positive recognition of us.

But what exactly is a « blind tasting »? Once, during a luncheon, with the boss of Summergate, he questioned why I wouldn't ask their Marcus to be our judge and why I don’t explain the process of blind tasting to readers?! It had never occurred to me that blind tasting needs any specific explanation. Since someone proposed, I think it may be necessary to some extent to tell our readers about the most important and my most concerned part of our magazine.

The so-called blind tasting is keeping drinkers away from wine labels so as to get their fair judgment that is uninfluenced by brand or vintages. It is almost the only way to achieve maximum impartiality for judging a wine.

Only Numbers

In Wine Press, we do blind tasting by specific wine region or grape varieties in each issue of our magazine; if there are adequate new wines in the season, they become subjects of blind tasting, too. After determining the theme, we send invitations to all importers that are willing to provide eligible sample wines, without regard to the company’s sizes. When receiving the wine lists, we classify all wines into groups by price, year, level, and origin etc. We deliver them to the place of tasting and blind all bottles «head to toe». Only editors who are responsible for wrapping the bottles know which is which (Even myself is not aware of the bottles order as I will only be present together with other judges for tasting), and the wine lists are disordered intentionally after classification (by this I mean to adjust in the same group of course), for example, for wines of price range of RMB 300-400, the first may not be the cheapest nor the last the most expensive. In this way, judges will not be able to tend to assume the latter ones are expensive thus rank those highly priced and possibly good wines at top positions.

When judges are in place, we begin to pour wines into empty glasses in front of them, so as to ensure everyone sees that each wine is from its corresponding bottle. Judges may taste wines at random and there is no set sequence. Reviews written down by judges are exactly what our readers will read (but not invented by editors). Judges give their rankings at the end of tasting of each group. After summarizing all rankings, we announce winner wines right away. Then we unpack bottles in front of the judges, and let everybody testify the results. The purpose is simple; on the one hand, judges are informed of the evaluation results immediately, and on the other hand, they are the best witnesses of how «blind» the blind tasting of Wine Press is doing.

No possibility of cheating.

In this case, it is impossible for judges to favor a wine or an importer unless they have see-through eyes and champion palate of a world-class sommelier!

Even if they do, all judges do not have the same preferred wine. However, in order to avoid any possible suspicion, I pay extra attention to select panelists. To this end, I have to spend energy to communicate uncompromisingly with some importers.

When I was the editor in chief for British wine magazine Decanter’s Simplified Chinese version, the person in charge at British headquarters told me that the selection of a magazine’s blind tasting jury is extremely important and they must consist of professionals recognized by the wine industry. This is something I kept in mind; therefore, our judges are restaurant and hotel staff, as well as freelance writers. They have the same role as ours, that is, to select quality wines in the vast sea of wines. In order to be neutral and impartial, we have no choice but to give up many professional talents with sensitive taste buds as they serve a particular importer.

In the wine world, the accumulation of experience is absolutely necessary, and therefore, we have more westerners in our tasting. However, I am very concerned about the proportion of western and Asian members of the jury, after all, our readers are Chinese and our target wine market is China. The jury is bound to have Asians, people who understand the Asian cuisine. Careful readers should notice that we always have Asian face(s) in Wine Press blind tasting. Unfortunately, we still do not have enough local connoisseurs; this is not difficult to understand, after all Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore drank wines earlier than Mainland China did.

Among the two or three blind tastings we hold, only one “Blind Tasting by Varieties” invites suppliers. As companies usually drink their own wines, we create this tasting as a platform to allow employees of importer to taste others’ products and know more about other wines, so as to enrich themselves in knowledge and understand more clearly their products’ positioning. However, the condition for participation is very strict: each company can only send one representative.

I have encountered troublesome situation several times. Although we had informed all suppliers of that only one representative could be sent, some company still came two. In this situation, we use only one of the two's ratings. The reason is very simple: even an importer identifies their own wine during blind tasting, they have only one vote. Ian Ford, Managing Partner of Summergate said if their Marcus can be so good that he recognizes their own wine in the blind tasting, he would be more than happy. However, whether he can or cannot recognize, only one representative of each importer can vote. While in the other two blind tastings that are not open to suppliers, our jury consists no importers; we insist on this point for the Wine Press readers’ benefit.

Who tastes blindly and who doesn’t ?

Do all wine critics taste wines blindly? Two years ago, Robert Parker from the United States came to China to do some events; I missed the opportunity to talk to him face to face since I was in Taipei at that time. I asked two people to ask him some questions for me, among which one was, whether the rumor saying that he never blind-tastes and has to see the labels to rate wines is true or false? If it is true, why? I got his answer which was “it is true”; he said he has to look at the labels when tasting for fear of being confused by the sequence of wines and disturbing his tasting results. Unfortunately I was not there; or I would like to ask him that won't his judgment be disturbed by looking at labels when tasting?

French writer and television host Mr. Bernard Pivot once invited Emile Peynaud, a great figure at his time and also the Father of Modern Winemaking, to his TV program. He picked up a bottle of Château Haut-Brion 1970 and asked the oenologist to taste it blindly on TV, thinking this must be a piece of cake for the great winemaker. But to everybody’s surprise, the master said the one of the top 5 Bordeaux wines was mediocre and not good at all. One can imagine, what would be waiting for him?! As Steven Spurrier in The Judgment of Paris 1976, both of them were sentenced by the wine industry and had lived a tough life for quite a while.

Compared to these international masters, I am just a junior who is not afraid of blind tasting and not afraid of making mistakes in blind tastings. Contrarily, I like blind tasting very much. It allows me to keep a clear mind, vibrant physique and prevents me from being misled by wine labels. Because of this stubbornness of mine, every time I visit a wine region I even try hard to avoid any relevant guidebooks as well as information of the wineries (of course I need to know some general information about the wine region). I remember my first trip to Champagne. Before that I didn’t like or know much about this expensive sparkling wine, until the day I drank one and felt amazed. Then I wrote a mail to one of my wine-lover friends in Taipei, telling him that I had discovered a great champagne. He asked who was the producer, I replied that it was called “Krug”. My friend replied “Krug, of course, it’s Krug!” I remember my first time to visit wine regions in Spain many years ago. A winery's PR staff received and said to me, "Welcome to Vega-Sicilia! You must have already heard of our reputed winery.” I replied, very politely and honestly, that, “this is the first time I heard about you (you can imagine her expression at my words).” As I said, I did no investigations on them and their wines on purpose before visiting. After tasted all their wines and their Unico impressed me, I gave it my highest praise, and congratulated them on that they can compete with those first growths of Bordeaux.

I got to know that both producers are the best of the best much later. I just ignored who they are and tasted their wines blindly. But precisely because of my ignorance of fames by doing blind tasting, my comments are genuine and sincere. Until now, I still stick to my own way of doing things when go visiting wineries. I have never seen peers would like to make themselves so “blind” deliberately; after all, it takes great courage to bare other people’s stares. By the way, I have something for those who may not know me well but rumor that I favor certain importers or some brands: Indeed, I taste wines blindly, but my mind is not blind at all!

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