Tasting Wines Blindfolded

The clues used to buy a wine include some of the following. Have you had it before, the price, the country of origin, is the feel or look familiar or unfamiliar, a reputational assessment of what to expect from the retailer or even the cellar door, the grape variety, and the list continues? Remarkably in a retail store this is processed in a flash and we march to the register with the selection.

Benjamin has had a project underway for some time and the wine called Dark Matter was released for the tasting weekend. The label offers no clues at all. Since a winery must state the alcohol, I can report this reads 15.8%. How do we make sense of this new release?

What is he up to? A customer just sent in a wine review which reads, good booze mate, and this may help.

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On tasting – a lengthy explanation of what I know.

Your moment has arrived. Imagine a large cellar, an unidentified red is poured, ‘what do you think of this.’? Even harder is this test. For years the Adelaide daily, The Advertiser, used the new release of Penfolds Grange to randomly stop city strollers and ask them to pass comment on an El cheapo compared to the Grange. Mostly no one had a clue.

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New year’s thoughts, testing new wines and a moment in Paris.

New year’s resolutions about wine are the same for you and me. The Glug side will make and discover interesting wines and sell these at reasonable prices while you will enjoy your drinking by not joining the madness of preposterous prices. The Monday letter will provide refresher courses about which parts of the wine lore are made up.

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