Blind, twice

I tasted the same lineup of wines blind solo, and then blind with friends. How similar were the experiences?

I needed to catch up some English Sparkling Wine releases last week. I usually taste sighted as it’s a bit of a palaver to taste blind at home (involving getting my wife to pour me flights in-between her own work calls, which is probably pretty annoying). In a small region like England it’s easy to form preconceptions about producers, though, and tasting even a small lineup blind can help make sure I’m really thinking about what I’m tasting.

If you’d like to see me speed-blind taste them (and which two I mixed up when trying to ID them), here it is:

The wines in the above video, in order, were:

1. Hundred Hills Preamble no. 2 (2021)

2. Nyetimber 1086 2014

3. Langham Culver Classic Cuvée (2022 base)

4. Langham Corallian Classic Cuvée (2022 base)

5. Hambledon Première Cuvée (new release)

6. Black Chalk Classic 2022

7. Hundred Hills Blanc de Noirs 2021

   (In the video I say Harrow and Hope instead of Hundred Hills - too many Hs!)

I then wrote brief notes after the tasting, incorporating some of those quick blind impressions and then a second taste sighted. Then I poured them blind for three friends who I often taste with, curious to see their impressions. These guys know their wine, buy and drink loads but aren’t technical/in the trade, and I love tasting with them; they’re exactly the sort of people I should be useful to as a critic.

As I note in the video, the Black Chalk, Corallian and Nyetimber all convinced on first taste. But did this translate to a group tasting? We drank them all, blind (with me keeping my mouth shut as to my preferences), and then submitted scores out of 10.

Here, then, were my takes plus our average scores and some thoughts from the group: