The joy of blind tasting

 

I’ve been drinking whisky for well over 30 years, and during that time I’ve taken part in many tasting sessions, either at distilleries or setting them up at home with sample bottles and miniatures I’ve purchased. During the first lockdown I started to look at the rise of online tastings, and curiosity led me to try a couple out. After one particular tasting session I added a comment on Twitter to thank the organisers for a great evening…and that’s where the fun began. 

Not long afterwards, I was contacted by Brian @MaltMusings to ask if I’d be interested in joining one of their Blind Tasting Consortium sessions as they had a place available. Needless to say I wasn’t going to say no, and thus began one of the most enlightening adventures of my whisky journey.

What’s so special about a true blind tasting?

I’ve always avoided reading either official or independent tasting notes on any whisky I haven’t tried. The reason for that is that I don’t want to introduce any bias that might cloud my own personal judgement. Whether we like it or not, either consciously or subconsciously, we all pick up snippets that stay with us and can affect our perceptions (try not thinking about a pink elephant now I’ve mentioned it!). The reality is though, avoiding tasting notes isn’t enough to achieve complete impartiality.

Marketing and brand loyalty play a huge factor in the perception we have about products. For most of us, certain distilleries have become firm favourites whilst others hold bad memories, both of which can introduce an element of bias into what we should be expecting from the whiskies they produce.

Blind tasting takes away that inherent bias. There is no prior knowledge of the distilleries involved, the regions or countries they come from, or anything about the whiskies themselves. Essentially, you’re left with your sense of taste, sense of smell and past experiences to come up with a set of tasting notes and your thoughts about the distiller, the type of finish, age and abv etc.

The results at the end are extremely revealing. Bottles and distilleries that are old favourites sometimes don’t quite hit the mark when tasted blind, whilst sometimes bottles you wouldn’t expect to be special perform extremely well. On some occasions, you get the reward of nailing the distillery and on very rare occasions even the bottling. On other occasions you’re not even in the right country with your guess.

But there are plenty of other benefits, for instance I’ve tried a significant number of whiskies I would either not have access to, or wouldn’t normally consider buying. Most of us have a comfort zone, and it’s great to be able to step out of it from time to time. 

It’s also given me the opportunity to meet with some great people and genuine whisky enthusiasts. Imagine being able to have a discussion on the effects of different types of Sherry cask on a whisky without the growing realisation that you’re boring the living daylights out of the other person.

I would highly recommend trying blind tasting if you’ve never done it before. It can be as easy as swapping whiskies with a friend but asking them not to tell you anything about it. 

If you want to know more about the Blind Tasting Consortium, how it works, and even how to set up your own events, visit the blog page here