by Julian Schultz
with the Worcester Wine Tasters

            I thought this would be the wine tasteoff of the century. What century? This one has just begun. Well then, the tasteoff of the decade. What decade? Hey, it’s only a slightly over a year old. So, I’m settling for the tasteoff of the year. What year? It’s not yet three months old!

             I resigned myself to knowing that the Worcester Wine Tasters (WWT) would participate in an interesting, if not exciting, comparison of California and Bordeaux wines, wondering which country’s wines would better please our palates.

             Good Dr. Bob Ouellette, our WWT guru, basking in the sunny sun of the south and daily golfing his balls into the blue/green Atlantic waters, arranged the twelve wines. As usual, the wines from his cellar were pedigree wines.

             In the last column about the WWT, filling-in for Bob, I wrote on the Tuscany wines tasting. I decried the extreme range in most of the scores -- like the same wine was scored from 60 to 89.

  I brought three scoring aids, hoping that by using them – two of them supposedly scientific – our experienced members would score their wines closer, within a moderate range. Professor Dr. Meunier, conducting the tasting in Bob’s absence, wisely distributed only the Hedonic Scale.

             The subjective Hedonic Scale proved to be the most useful to some of our members. It rates wine subjectively: by Hate It -- 0 to 3  -- with five negative descriptors each for sight, smell, savor, swallow and balance in the hate category.

            With Dislike It – 4 to 7 – the five descriptors were not quite so negative.

             Acceptable -- 8 to 13 – the five descriptors were lukewarm: OK wine at best.

             Like it  -- 14 to 17 – the five descriptors were positive: all good things.

             Love It -- 18 to 20 – the five descriptors were ecstatic, wine to die for.

             We determined our ratings for the wines by sniffing and savoring, seeking fruit primarily, and scored them. We then justified our ratings, using the appropriate descriptors in the pertinent category, and multiplying by 5 to approximate a 100-point scale. This reminded me of Wordsworth, the Lake Poet, who wrote his poems about the lake and then went to the lake to confirm what he had written.

  Not the most scientific approach. We didn’t first ascertain assertiveness, acid, alcohol, aftertaste; or balance, body, bite; or color, complexity, concentration; or dryness; or tannin before we judged the wine. Most of us immediately determined our scores on the wine’s smell, taste and fruit, and stopped there. The other technical attributes, as important as they may be, wouldn’t influence us enough to change our scores that were decided by smell, flavor and fruit.

 In summary, we approached the wines for the pleasure they afforded us, not for their technical attributes; the latter were voiced later by some of us and were of less importance.

              Others of the 16 tasters didn’t use any scale. Upon reflection, perhaps they were right. If the wine smelled and tasted pleasing to them, they rated it on the 100-point scale. And that was that.

             The results shown in the box below indicate that California wines have equal staying power to the Bordeaux. Many of our Francophile members were nonplussed; our homegrown wine aficionados were smugly satisfied, including me.

            As I study the box score, I believe we showed some improvement over last month. Let’s leave it by saying, de gustibus non disputandum est, there is no accounting for taste.

             Hurry home Bob. These tastings and analyses are your baby. Poor Hubie Meunier and I valiantly suffered for you these past two months.

             A thought occurs: Each of us brings four glasses. Four wines of each flight are poured at once into each glass. In the course of tasting, going back and forth among the wines, retasting them, I wonder how many glasses are set down out of sequence. If so, for example, wine reported as wine number three actually may be wine number four or any other number because out of order of the pour. 

            That has happened to me so many times that now my four glasses are numbered one to four. True enough, I still set them down out of pouring order during the retaste; but by observing the numbered glasses, I replace them in their proper place.

            I suspect that many wide divergences in our scores on the same wine may be the result of reporting on a wine that may be in misplaced order.

             Something for my colleague Worcester Wine Tasters to consider.

drbob@oxfordwineroom.com