Wine Taste and Technical Knowledge

I just was reading a blog post on a new wine announcement and the author was saying the following:

"the wines aren’t for the wine-savvy crowd but for the barbecuing dad who wants to have a nice tasting wine without having to learn about terroir and varietals"

My first thought was:

What exactly does knowing technical information about a wine has to do about enjoying the taste of a wine?

I have been involved in the wine trade for over 20 years and I have always been stunned by that kind of thinking. When I met Normita she did not know anything about the technical aspects of wine and of wine tasting, but she sure could easily know if she liked a wine and could greatly enjoy them without this knowledge. Most of the time, the knowledge can even get in the way of enjoying wine. Years ago, when I was organizing weekly wine tastings at the wine store a friend was managing, we did some nice tests to prove this idea of mine. We organized a formal tasting for a group of friends who belonged to a local wine club. All of those people were wine fanatics and they were armed with a vast knowledge about the wines we were planning to taste.

We had originally planned a tasting of over a dozen wines, but to test this crazy idea of mine we decided to narrow the selection to about 6 or 7 bottles and created an event where there would be a blind tasting first where the tasters did not know anything about the wines they were tasting, followed by a regular tasting of the same wines that ranged from good tasting low-end ones to a very expensive, but overhyped, one. The tasters were told that the two flights of the tasting were different wines and that we would compare notes at the end of the evening. I led the tasting, and tasted the first flight blind without knowing which one was which and noted the wines accordingly. We then followed with the regular tasting where the crowd could apply their vast knowledge of the wines to the bottles that they now could see.

The results were amazing. In the blind tasting one of the midrange wines came out ahead by a wide margin followed by the cheapest one, and the expensive one came out dead last. The regular tasting of the same wines coming from the same bottles was totally the opposite. The wines came in exactly in the order of price and reputation. What had changed between the tastings? The wines were the exact same ones, but the tasters now could let their opinion and knowledge color their judgment. I have seen this happened over and over again and it is something that we should always keep to the back of our minds when we taste wines. We should always remember that it is only fermented grape juice and no amount of knowledge should color our opinion on if we enjoy the wine or not. Let us enjoy the wines that we do enjoy, even though they might not have the prestige of some of the overhyped brands, or of the proper vintage and terroir. The important thing is that we enjoy fully what is in our glass. Knowledge is important if you want to analyze the experience fully, and if you need or enjoy the technical side of the wine experience, but remember that this knowledge does not change the taste of the wine in your glass and it might even color your judgment.

Lucito