Lodi becomes the testing ground for judging wines
The shiny sticker high on a bottle of wine, boasting of a gold medal from some competition, is apt to leave some buyers mystified when they taste the wine.
They wonder, "What were those judges thinking?"
Or, more to the point, "What were they drinking?"
For several reasons, a wine can vary from bottle to bottle, but generally it remains relatively constant.
Any perceived difference between what judges tasted and what consumers taste likely is just that, a matter of perception.
This is the message Tim Hanni is trying to drill into the wine trade as a self-appointed ambassador of the consumer.
"It's biological individualism. We are all unique, including our sensory equipment," says Hanni. "We all perceive things differently."
Personal preferences for one wine over another have as much to do with how people are wired at birth and how their likes and dislikes evolve through emotional experiences, education and the like, as they do with the nature of wine itself.
"Wine is what it is," says Hanni, who for the past 10 years has studied what he calls "neuro-gustatory programming," the shaping of personal attitudes toward wine. Aside from any obvious defects, the value of wine, the sense of whether it is good or bad, relies to a large extent on the constitution and conditioning of the people who drink it.
Nature and nurture both are at work in how people respond to wine. On one hand, genetics determine the number of taste buds a person has. On the other, a person's cultural background and experiences help shape positive and negative responses to flavors, Hanni has concluded.
"Taste sensitivity and life experience equals preferences; our likes and dislikes," Hanni says.
Traditional wine marketing, he's convinced, has had it all wrong by focusing on the wine more than on the person. So, he's taking on established wine-think on two fronts.
One is creation of the "Budometer" (www.budometer.com), a free online tool to help people define their taste preferences. By answering a brief series of questions about their likes and dislikes of coffee, liquor, salt, etc., they're directed to the kinds of wines they most likely will enjoy.
Secondly, he hopes to shake up the world of wine competitions through several steps that range from helping judges avoid fatigue to reporting the results in a way to help consumers buy only the medal-winning wines they most likely will enjoy.
His retooling of the standard wine competition was put to its first test last week at the inaugural Lodi International Wine Awards, whose fitting slogan was "celebrating the diversity of wine and personal taste."
The competition drew 527 wines. Judges were divided into five panels of six each. They were recruited from the same pool most competitions use, resulting in a mix of wine educators, winemakers, wine merchants and wine writers.
There the similarity with other competitions ended. Two judges on each panel were classified as "hypersensitive" tasters, two as "sensitive" tasters and two as "tolerant" tasters.
This classification was based on their Budometer reading and on their replies to a supplemental questionnaire that went into more depth about their attitudes on topics that ranged from the aging of wine in oak to the varietals they most enjoy.
In brief, "hypersensitive tasters" tend to be highly sensitive to tannins, bitterness and acidity, and customarily prefer wines fruity and a little sweet; "sensitive" tasters are less sensitive to those components and generally embrace a wide range of wine styles; and "tolerant" tasters are virtually immune to the components, and like wines even if they are heavy with tannins, bitterness and acids. None is superior to the others, just different.
During the competition, judges also had their tongues painted with blue food coloring and photographed so Hanni eventually could count their taste buds to determine any correlation between the number, the results of the questionnaires, and how they judged the wines.
In contrast to most other wine competitions in this country, judges weren't to discuss the wines, and they weren't to take notes, measures intended to avoid the biased influence of a dominant personality and to avoid distractions and fatigue.
Judges also were encouraged to rinse with a salty and citric mystery solution that Hanni had brewed.
"The use of crackers, roast beef, olives and the like results in an unpredictable set of reactions that can highly disturb a judge's response to the wine that comes next," said Hanni in promoting use of the solution. "It has to be consistent, or the results get skewed."
A random sampling of several judges who used the solution found that they generally liked its cleansing effect.
"That was terrific. What a great idea," said Richard Peterson of Napa, a California winemaker for 50 years. "A slight rinse of that and the astringency and puckery feeling in my mouth from tannins in the zinfandels and cabernets went completely away. It refreshed my mouth."
For consumers, the biggest difference between the Lodi competition and other judgings is the reporting of the results. Instead of a simple gold, silver or bronze medal, each award-winning wine receives up to three medals, reflecting how it scored with judges according to whether they were "hypersensitive," "sensitive" or "tolerant."
(The results are at www.lodiwineawards.com.)
Let's look at one local wine in the competition to show how it works: The Cooper Vineyards 2005 Amador County Primitivo got a gold medal from the "tolerant" judges, a silver from the "hyper-sensitive" and a bronze from the "sensitive."
Therefore, people who have had their taste buds evaluated by the Budometer and found to be "tolerant" most likely will enjoy the Cooper primitivo, though the other types probably wouldn't quibble if served a glass.
Is Hanni on to something, or will his approach only complicate and confuse an already complex matter?
He's the first to say that his techniques are hypothetical, that the Lodi competition was an experiment, and that the tools he's created, from the Budometer to the palate-cleansing solution, need more work.
His research and persuasiveness, however, have won him several key allies, including sensory specialists at several universities.
"Tim is basing his work on real science," said Linda Bartoshuk, a professor with the Smell and Taste Center of the University of Florida. "I credit him for taking on the widespread belief that some wines are better than others."
At the University of California, Davis, scientists who are helping analyze sensory data gathered by Hanni also applaud his gumption, but caution that the study of how people react to smells and flavors is young.
"It looks simple, but it's a can of worms," said UC Davis sensory scientist Michael O'Mahony, who is working with Hanni to get a better grip on how the human brain processes information.
Hildegarde Heymann, professor of enology at UC Davis, who is to analyze Hanni's data from Lodi to determine whether different types of judges score differently, is skeptical about whether firm conclusions will be found: "I don't have great expectations. It's not as clear-cut and simple as it sounds."
Contrary to his populist approach to wine today, Hanni has the credentials to be the archetypical wine snob. In 1990, he became one of the first two Americans to pass the rigorous Master of Wine exam. For years, he's worked in wine education and marketing, though he hasn't had a drink since "9 o'clock Mountain Time, Dec. 16, 1992," when he recognized his alcoholism and checked into rehab.
Since then, he nevertheless has remained an energetic and popular figure on the international wine scene. He's rechanneled his passion for wine from drinking it to studying it, with an emphasis on breaking down barriers between wine and the pleasure it can bring people who can tolerate it. He's traded in his black tie for a black T-shirt.
He's working to convince people that they aren't wrong, that they need not feel inadequate or intimidated when they they taste a wine they just don't get, regardless of how many gold-medal stickers are on the bottle.