I love reading roundups and best-of lists, but writing them can be a bee-atch.

Take today’s column. I’d rather have used most or all of the space to riff on Robin Goldstein’s “The Wine Trials,” especially the taste tests themselves and previous ones cited in the book.

A few years back, I saw a fun wine documentary hosted by John Cleese. At the outset, he cited a test in which blindfolded tasters had a terrible time determining whether a wine was red or white. Similarly, tests that inspired Goldstein found French researcher Frederic Brochet making mischief, but (mostly) toward the end of proving a point that Goldstein subsequently embraced: Even the experts hve their fallacies.

Brochet poured the same wine into separate bottles — a Grand Cru and a Vin de Table — and 57 French “experts” had wildly varying opinions of the same juice, skewed toward the bottle’s pedigree. Later, Brochet put red food coloring in white wine and elicted descriptors typically used for vin rouge (dark fruits, spices) from tasters.

The point is one that I’ve emphasized before (and will again): Each and every one of you should trust your own palate more than anyone else’s, present company included. I’ve tried merely to provide a bit of guidance and to help readers learn how to learn about wine, but I ain’t on a pedestal (which would probably break were I to perch atop it).

To learn more about the vagaries of tasting, read this and this, fascinating articles passed along by my friend Jason Kallsen.

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 4th, 2008 at 10:28 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.