I wanted to test if a series of wine duels worked as a way to taste and evaluate wine. The idea seemed simple enough: which of two wines would people pick if they weren’t influenced by any previous bias towards the brand, label, or style of wine? I thought I had all the details worked out and people were coming over for our annual New Year’s Day party, so why not do some blind wine tasting? I chose wines from Costco as the theme for my experiment and prepared the bottles, glasses, and ballots. What could go wrong?

I didn’t let anyone know my plan until I brought out two chilled bottles wrapped in tinfoil and only identified as 1-A and 1-B. Intrigue grew as I presented two labeled wine flutes to each of my guests. While I passed out ballots and pens, everyone’s faces became filled with surprise and excitement.

As I poured the first wine into their glasses, it was now apparent that it was sparkling wine. I explained that all my participants needed to do was taste both wines and then pick which they liked better. The ballots also had optional areas for guessing the primary grape, country or region, and vintage. For fun, I also presented a word diagram with the tasting words from the bottle labels and everyone enjoyed matching word to wine. To my surprise, no one identified a wine correctly but they sure had a good time trying.

Boy, was I unprepared for how quickly they drank the first tastes! But, never fear, Chuck came to the rescue and helped with the next pouring. Despite needing a little extra manpower, a few mix ups with glasses and ballot blunders everyone couldn’t wait to taste the next wine.

The group really came to life when the tasting moved to a red wine and everyone quickly started trying to guess what it was. I had to bite my tongue not to provide information that would help identify the wine but I couldn’t help letting them know that the fourth tasting consisted of blends.

The anticipation of learning which wine would fall and which would remain standing grew with each duel. People couldn’t wait for the foil to be pulled off and the mystery wine revealed.

In Part 2 we’ll take our first look at the results of the first ever official Wine2Duel.