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MICHAEL FRIDJHON: Getting prejudice out of the way of taste buds
IT IS impossible to approach a bottle of wine without an element of prejudgment, if not prejudice. To the extent that you know — or think you know — something about the producer, you are likely to have an opinion on the merits of the winemaking.Everyone has views on the virtues (or otherwise) of grape varieties. It seems obvious that a pure judgment requires a blind tasting. However, if a wine is completely unsighted, you are faced with contextual difficulties: how can you judge a blend if you know nothing about its component parts?You might think you have picked up the cassis and lead pencil notes of the cabernet, the plummier nuances of merlot — but you could also be misdirecting yourself.When it comes to potential, how can you tell what the future holds if you have no idea about the age of what’s in the bottle?If tasting a wine is reduced to a totally unsighted experience, you are certainly freed from the burden of prejudgment, but you are also deprived of the information you nee...
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