The Paris 1976 Wine Tastings Revisited Once More: Comparing Ratings of Consistent and Inconsistent Tasters

Abstract

AbstractIn the author's earlier research, five quite reliable and six quite unreliable subsets of tasters were identified, from among the full sample of eleven wine tasters, at the heralded 1976 Paris blind Chardonnay and Bordeaux/Cabernets wine competitions. This study shows quite conclusively that the consistent tasters and the inconsistent ones provided quite different results when compared both to each other and to the results based upon the full sample of eleven tasters. Results demonstrate the following: one should be wary of findings based solely upon an omnibus approach (i.e., results based only on the full sample of 11 tasters); that a next logical step is not only to continue to identify consistent tasters, but to design future studies in which these reliable judges are used to teach neophyte imbibers to also achieve high levels of wine tasting consistency; and that in continuing to investigate other important empirically derived oenological information, we should not, in the process, lose sight of the sheer hedonic pleasure of the next glass of wine.