For The Love Of Port

It's hard for me to guess how much of my tasting is done blind vs sighted, but I suppose it's probably a pretty high percentage blind. My casual drinking is all sighted, of course, but that doesn't amount to much compared to larger tastings. So maybe something like 50% blind?

For me, any sort of serious note-taking should be done blind, whether that's just me taking notes for my own use or a professional critic taking notes to publish. That said, "blind" doesn't have to mean "totally oblivious" in order to get a proper result. A blind tasting of 1985 Vintage Ports is still blind, but the tasters at least have a frame of reference within which to make their judgments.

For casual drinking or even just for smaller tastings I prefer sighted. It makes the tasting less stressful.

I agree with Glenn on not being totally oblivious. We usually structure my Port Club's tastings as follows:

I let the gents know the genre we are tastings---i.e. "10 Year Old Tawny's" or "LBVs from the Late 90's"--whatever the theme is (or is not)--the only thing we will do in the way of a guess is I have put in a 1977 VP vs a 1994 VP (same house) and see if they could guess the older/younger.

Now here's a twist---the majority like to taste one at a time versus having a flight. We do both at various meetings.

I really do like to taste blind when I can, although the context helps. However, most of my opportunities to taste port are at events where everything is served sighted. Last year a little under 7% of my tasting notes were written without knowing what was in my glass (other than the fact it was port).

When tasting blind the group I taste with always try to guess shipper and vintage before the port is revealed. We award ourselves one point for getting the correct shipper and one for the correct vintage. The average winning score (we are competitive) is usually 2 or 3 out of about 20 possible points. We are rubbish but have fun doing it.

Alex, is it safe to assume that your group, like most mortals is far better at guessing vintage correctly than producer?

My group of wine tasting friends almost always taste blind - from the sparkling aperitif, through the wines, and onto the dessert wines. In fact the only exception has been a few very special ports like a '63 or '70. So I can say categorically that all the ports I drink are served blind, just that the ones I serve are known to me and not to the others. Between the ports I serve our group and the ones I drink at home with my partner (also blind even if there are only the two of us - she loves port so it is a small price to pay) I reckon in the end about 50% of the ports I drink is blind.

As a group we are not competitive and realize how difficult it is to guess wines blind. We never know what we will be served and in the case of ports not even the type. We have to guess whether the port is an LBV, single Quinta, or vintage, and then if it isn't real, as in Portuguese, where it might be from. Then we move onto the vintage and then the shipper. I really do think it important to guess the category and it really does shine a light on our ability to understand the broad spectrum of port styles.

As for the idea of serving ports, or even wines, to novices I do not believe in it. There seems no sense in asking a novice to guess the style or vintage of port when they know little of it.

Mahmoud.

Al B. wrote:When tasting blind the group I taste with always try to guess shipper and vintage before the port is revealed. We award ourselves one point for getting the correct shipper and one for the correct vintage. The average winning score (we are competitive) is usually 2 or 3 out of about 20 possible points. We are rubbish but have fun doing it.

I wonder how that would compare to random guessing. I'll hypothesize that if I just threw out the names of 5-10 major shippers and years based on your general patterns (i.e. do you generally just serve the generally declared years, or do SQVPs and other off-years regularly come into play), I would probably get a point. And with a group of say ten people guessing, the distribution would result in someone probably missing entirely, and one person getting 2 or 3.

I hope my hypothesis doesn't take away your fun, as I enjoying guessing as well.

Eric Menchen wrote:

Al B. wrote:When tasting blind the group I taste with always try to guess shipper and vintage before the port is revealed. We award ourselves one point for getting the correct shipper and one for the correct vintage. The average winning score (we are competitive) is usually 2 or 3 out of about 20 possible points. We are rubbish but have fun doing it.

I wonder how that would compare to random guessing. I'll hypothesize that if I just threw out the names of 5-10 major shippers and years based on your general patterns (i.e. do you generally just serve the generally declared years, or do SQVPs and other off-years regularly come into play), I would probably get a point. And with a group of say ten people guessing, the distribution would result in someone probably missing entirely, and one person getting 2 or 3.

I hope my hypothesis doesn't take away your fun, as I enjoying guessing as well.

You are pretty much spot on. As Roy suggests further up the thread, we're not disgraceful at estimating vintages and usually get the decade right (although we have been known to be over 100 years out on rare occasions). Shippers are more difficult, but by having tried to identify certain characteristics associated with each shipper we seem to be getting better. My guess is that the best of us are a little better than an educated random guess, but only just.

It is fun to watch the pros from within the Port trade blind guess and in reality, few are any better than us amateurs. I have witnessed this with individuals as well as en masse at large gatherings of winemakers and managing directors. It is fascinating theater and comforting to see them struggle more often than not; even when the Ports happen to be there own. Very humbling ... always and forever.