Matt Bailey

The Art of Blind Tasting

It’s Champs month, so we take a closer look at using your senses and the art of tasting whisky blind.

As soon as you mention tasting whisky blind, without any prior knowledge of what’s in your glass, there are generally only three responses you get: (a) I love doing that, (b) I’ve never done that, or (c) I hate doing it because I like to know what I’m tasting and/or I feel intimidated by getting it wrong. That third response is the one I hear the most. People afraid / fearful of tasting whisky blind out of a misplaced perception that they will be judged as having a poor palate, or that their senses aren’t as sharp as they could be. Let’s talk about flavour and sensory analysis for a moment here. One of the reasons people are sometimes fearful of blind tasting whisky is because they’ve read about or have been personally burned too many times by tricks and tactics played by those serving the whisky. First comes the trust you place in someone putting a foreign spirit in your glass and expecting you to taste it. What could it be? I hope it’s whisky? What if I say the “wrong” tasting note? What if I say nothing at all? The second reason people fear these experiments sometimes is because nobody likes to be fooled, unless they’re sitting at a Penn & Teller show.

One of the pioneering moments in blind tasting actually came from a Frenchman named Frédéric Brochet. Frédéric is a fascinating man who changed the game of blind wine tasting forever. In 2001, Frederic Brochet conducted two experiments at the University of Bordeaux. In one experiment, he got 54 oenology (the study of wine tasting) undergraduates together and had them taste one glass of red wine and one glass of white wine. He had them describe each wine in as much detail as their expertise would allow. What he didn’t tell them was both were the same wine. He just dyed the white one red. In the other experiment, he asked the experts to rate two different bottles of red wine. One was very expensive, the other was cheap. Again, he tricked them. This time he had put the cheap wine in both bottles. So what were the results?

The tasters in the first experiment, the one with the dyed wine, described the sorts of berries and grapes and tannins they could detect in the red wine just as if it really was red. Every single one, all 54, could not tell it was white. In the second experiment, the one with the switched labels, the subjects went on and on about the cheap wine in the expensive bottle. They called it complex and rounded. They called the same wine in the cheap bottle weak and flat.

So is the fancy world of wine tasting all pretentious nonsense? Not exactly. The wine tasters in Brochet’s experiment above were being influenced by expectation. A wine expert’s objectivity and powers of taste under normal circumstance might be amazing, but Brochet’s manipulations of the environment tricked his subjects enough to dampen their senses. Expectation, as it turns out, is just as important as raw sensation. The build up to an experience can completely change how you interpret the information reaching your brain from your otherwise objective senses. In psychology, true objectivity is pretty much considered to be impossible. Memories, emotions, conditioning, and all sorts of other mental residue taint every new experience you gain. In addition to all this, your expectations powerfully influence the final vote in your head over what you believe to be reality. So, when tasting a wine, or a whisky, or watching a movie, or driving an exotic supercar -- some of what you experience comes from within and some comes from without. Expensive wine is like anything else that is expensive, the expectation it will taste better actually makes it taste better.

This realisation plays a role then in how I encourage you to taste and enjoy Society single casks. As I’ve said before: older and/or more expensive whisky isn’t necessarily “better” than younger whisky, it’s just different. In the past three months alone we’ve had five year old refill casks to 32 year old sherried whisky and everything in between. The focus has been, and will always be, on flavour.

“Trust your instincts, go with your first guess, focus on flavours and senses you recognise or perhaps don’t, and have fun in the guessing, the chase, the flavour being first ahead of the brand.”

Now compare this to whisky tasting blind: higher proof than wine, harder to sometimes taste through the ethanol level, and commercially-bottled whisky usually has E150 artificial caramel colouring added. This takes the game to a whole new level, adding even more intimidation perhaps. What about single cask whisky? Nearly impossible. I’m in a small whisky club locally with some likeminded friends and at least one of the whiskies presented each time we meet up is served blind. This is a fantastic constant reminder of how to fine tune my senses and critically assess the whisky. At one of these gatherings, a whisky was poured blind as the first whisky of the day. First up, I looked at the colour, nosed it, nosed again with my mouth open to inhale a different side of the aromas, and then tasted it neat. The second taste again was neat so I could recalibrate. The third taste was with a few drops of water added. Even if this whisky was as low as 40% ABV, there are always mysteries and answers under the surface, and when you get to 20-22%-ish, things start getting weirdly transparent. Flaws, flavours, and fun start happening and picking it out blind becomes slightly easier. In this instance, both my colleague and I looked at each other, and straight away picked it as a Dalmore. This doesn’t happen often, but it did this time. I should also make note here that at another catch up with the same group, we picked a Bunnhabhain incorrectly as a Paul John, so do with that which you will. Blind tasting can also fall into the realm of the scientific as distilleries and industry bodies more and more use the art of sensory analysis to work with their spirit. Vast food and beverage knowledge over years of training to make sure what ends up in your glass as the enjoyer is only the best of the best. From flavour wheels to complex algorithmic analysis of spirit to bring the best out of each release. It’s something most serious distilleries already do, or are working on building into their downstream, and it’s something the SMWS are already deeply connected with from our work with the Scotch Whisky Research Institute. So in the end, what is the art of tasting whisky blind? Trust your instincts, go with your first guess, focus on flavours and senses you recognise or perhaps don’t, and have fun in the guessing, the chase, the flavour being first ahead of the brand.

See you at the Champs!

Matt Bailey