Blind tasting is a very odd activity. Contrary to what many imagine, it has nothing to do with blindfolds. It involves tasting a wine without seeing the label and it can deliver shocking surprises. I tasted seven non-vintage champagnes blind with a group of professionals recently. There was horror when they discovered the wine most of them preferred carried a label they regarded as their least favourite. That sort of result is especially common with champagne, arguably the most image-driven – rather than quality-driven – wine of all. But it happens all the time when wine is tasted blind.
盲品(blind tasting)并不是大多数人想象中的蒙着眼睛品酒，而是通过纯品尝而非看酒标来对葡萄酒进行评价。这是一种奇特的活动，因为它常常为参与者带来无比的震撼。最近，我与一组专业人士对七款无年份香槟(non-vintage Champagne)进行了盲品，而最终的结果令这些人士如坐针毡，因为他们发现在盲品中很多中意的酒款，居然是自己在平日饮用时最看不上的那些。由于卖相常常比质量更具影响力，这样的结果在香槟的盲品中尤其正常，不过在几乎所有葡萄酒的盲品中，这种事情也时常发生。
Because I’m interested in how wines really taste as opposed to how I think they should, I taste wine blind as often as I can, especially when assessing similar young wines. But blind tasting when you know absolutely nothing about the wine in front of you is something completely different. The notoriously difficult Master of Wine exams include three sessions during which you have a dozen glasses in front of you and nothing more helpful than a printed exam paper asking you to identify each wine as closely as possible, and assess its quality.
为什么盲品结果与正常品尝结果常常相悖呢？出于对此事的好奇，我平常也尽可能多地进行盲品，尤其在评价风格相似的年轻葡萄酒时。不过，对一款未提供任何信息的葡萄酒进行品尝是一件非同寻常的事情：令人“闻风丧胆”的葡萄酒大师(Master of Wine)考试就包含有三场盲品环节，应试者需要在答题纸上写出与样品酒实际情况尽可能相近的信息以及质量评价，而他们仅有的工具只是自己面前的十二只酒杯而已。
Now that the MW is behind me, I taste wine completely blind only very rarely, and never in public. (When I started out in wine everyone expected me to get it wrong and noticed only when I got it right – today the reverse is true.) So my blind tastings these days are round the dinner table with good friends – and once a year when I act as a judge, with Hugh Johnson, in the Oxford v Cambridge wine-tasting competition.
考虑到头上顶着葡萄酒大师的光环，我极少做完全的盲品，而且从来不在公开场合进行（刚入行时，我出不出错别人都无所谓；现在恰恰相反，有不少人等着我出错呢——我可不能给别人这个机会），因此最近我的几场盲品都是在餐桌前与好朋友一起进行的。除此之外，我还会与休•约翰逊(Hugh Johnson)在一年一度的牛津—剑桥葡萄酒盲品赛(Oxford v Cambridge wine-tasting competition)中担任评委。
This is the most extraordinary varsity match, always held well before the Boat Race but taken just as seriously nowadays. This year’s taste-off took place at the end of last month, as usual in the Oxford and Cambridge Club on Pall Mall in London. The teams of six plus a reserve had been training since the beginning of the academic year. The Cambridge coach, a past competitor who has served in the US army in Iraq and signs himself “Major Dave”, put them through five blind tastings a week in the month leading up to the match.
牛津—剑桥葡萄酒盲品赛是最特别的大学比赛，常常在赛艇(Boat Race)之前举办，其隆重程度也丝毫不逊于赛艇。今年的比赛场地仍旧是位于伦敦(London)蓓尔美尔街(Pall Mall)的牛津剑桥俱乐部(the Oxford and Cambridge Club)。为了在比赛中获得胜利，每支队伍的六名选手外加一名预备选手自学年伊始就开始接受训练。剑桥大学(Cambridge)队的教练是该项赛事的往届选手，由于曾在驻伊拉克(Iraq)美军服役而自称戴夫少校(Major Dave)，此君在比赛当月开始就为队员们安排每周五次的盲品，可谓不打无准备之仗。
The Oxford coach, historian Hanneke Wilson, inflicts a similar routine, including a 12-bottle tasting under match conditions every Saturday afternoon. Captain of her team was Brunei-born biophysicist Ren Lim, whom I had met at last year’s competition where he was crowned top taster. Another alumnus of the Oxford team, Alex Hunt, now a Master of Wine and professional wine buyer, told me how he’d been drafted in to organise some practice tasting this year and Ren had nailed a 2011 Pinot Grigio from Collio precisely. Such precision, I should report, is rare.
身为牛津大学(Oxford)队教练的历史学家哈内克•威尔森(Hanneke Wilson)也毫不怠慢，每周六下午，她都为队员们组织十二款酒盲品的实战演练。其麾下的前任队长苒琳(Ren Lim) 是一位出生于文莱(Brunei)的生物物理学家，曾在去年摘得最佳品尝员桂冠。牛津大学的葡萄酒大师兼专业葡萄酒买手阿莱克斯•亨特(Alex Hunt)给我讲述了自己今年被召唤入队来组织盲品练习的经历，同时还告诉我苒琳曾在备赛练习中准确地判断出来自科里奥(Collio)的2011年份灰比诺(Pinot Grigio)葡萄酒。我必须承认，能有如此的准确度，实属罕见和难得。
When I attended my first Oxbridge wine-tasting match in the 1970s, two brothers from Hong Kong were competing and this was thought hugely novel. In this year’s teams, six out of the 14 had Asian surnames and the Cambridge team included an American, a Pole and a Lithuanian doing a PhD in “automatic emotion prediction in music”. I do hope none of them is neglecting their studies for wine. The top Cambridge taster, Stefan Kuppen, was a Dutch ex-investment banker and the top Oxford taster with exactly the same score (140 points out of a possible 240) was a first-timer, chemistry PhD student Tom Arnold.
记得我第一次参加这项赛事是在上世纪七十年代，那场比赛中，有一对来自香港(Hong Kong)的兄弟颇有实力，在当时看来这种情况很新奇；而在今年的比赛场上，四十位选手中有六位来自亚洲，剑桥大学队中有一位美国选手、一位波兰选手和一位正在攻读博士学位的立陶宛选手——我真心希望他们不要停止对葡萄酒的学习。剑桥大学的最佳品尝员斯蒂芬•库彭(Stefan Duppen)是一位荷兰投资银行家，而与其获得同样分数的（240分中获得140分）牛津大学最佳品尝员是一位新手——目前正在攻读化学专业博士学位的汤姆•阿诺德(Tom Arnold)。
In the end Oxford won by a dribble, 689 to 677 marks. Cambridge captain, Ellie Kim, a second-time competitor who grew up in Korea and Canada, was distraught. “I can’t believe it,” she kept repeating when the results were announced in Berry Bros’ cellars across the road, making me as co-marker feel decidedly guilty. Hugh and I always taste blind ourselves first so that we can judge what incorrect guesses we feel are admissible. And then, on the anonymous but numbered papers submitted, we allot up to five marks for the dominant grape variety, up to eight for geographical origin, up to two for vintage and up to five for the, generally almost illegible, written comments on each wine.
比赛的结果公布于与赛场仅有一路之隔的贝瑞兄弟(Berry Bro)的酒窖，最终牛津队以689比677的成绩战胜了剑桥队。剑桥队的队长艾丽•金(Ellie Kim)是第二次参加该项赛事，这位在韩国(Korea)和加拿大(Canada)都有过生活经历的选手在听到比赛结果后一直在重复着“简直不敢相信”，这让作为打分人之一的我有种负罪感。休•约翰逊和我总会在比赛开始之前对样品酒进行盲品，如此一来我们可以判定选手们的答卷在哪些方面的错误可以接受。在判卷时，我们在主要葡萄品种项目上最高给到五分，在产区项目上最高给到八分，在年份项目上最高给到两分，而在通常情况下比较难以辨认字迹的葡萄酒评价项目上最高给到五分。
Usually the wines are fairly run-of-the-mill but, this year, Pol Roger champagne, which has sponsored the event since 1992, decided to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the competition by persuading some of the world’s top wine producers to donate some of their finest bottles. So it was that we were treated to the likes of Le Montrachet and first growth Château Haut-Brion, not to mention a 1953 to celebrate the anniversary (see below).
通常情况下，大赛选用的葡萄酒都处于适合日常饮用的级别。不过今年情况有所不同，作为赛事赞助商（自1992年起）的保爵禄(Pol Roger)香槟为了庆祝该项赛事的第六十周年，极力说服一些世界顶级庄园来赞助一些自己最好的酒款，这让比赛选手们品尝到了很多顶级佳酿，比如蒙哈榭(Le Montrachet)以及红颜容庄园(Château Haut-Brion)1953年份——能喝到这款酒真让人难以置信（酒单见文章末尾列表）。
I was reminded of how, when asked to give tips to MW students on the tasting papers, I assured them that they would never be served a first growth, since the institute couldn’t afford one. The next year the red wines set before the candidates included three vintages of Château Lafite. (This was long before Chinese-led inflation of that particular first-growth’s prices.)
记得有一年为葡萄酒大师学员进行品酒考试指导时，我非常肯定地说他们绝对不会在考试中品尝到一级庄园(first growth)的葡萄酒，因为学院无法负担这么高的费用——结果第二年的考试中，红葡萄酒样品里居然有三款不同年份的拉菲庄园(Château Lafite)！而在这之后不久，中国市场就炒起了葡萄酒（尤其是一级庄园）的价格泡沫。
None of the tasters this year seemed to realise that the wines were quite so smart, but that’s not surprising since blind tasting is the least flattering way to show off a wine. And many of the student competitors had very probably never tasted a first growth, much less a wine from the 1950s.
估计今年的参赛选手中没有一个会意识到此次选酒的特殊性，不过这也并不奇怪，因为在盲品中赞助样品是一种最不显摆的展示方式。我估计参赛学生们中的很多人很有可能从来没有喝过一级庄园，更别提上个世纪五十年代的红颜容庄园了。
The same could not be said for two other teams – wine writers v wine trade – who, exceptionally to celebrate the anniversary, were given exactly the same wines to identify in a separate room, their papers marked by senior Masters of Wine Anthony Hanson and Sebastian Payne. The atmosphere in their room was so competitively tense that at one point Pol Roger’s selector of the blind wines refused to enter.
比赛当天还有另外两支队伍，分别是葡萄酒作家队和葡萄酒行业队。由于庆祝六十周年的关系，这两个队在另外一个房间也盲品了比赛用酒，答卷由资深葡萄酒大师安东尼•汉森(Anthony Hanson)和塞巴斯蒂安•佩恩(Sebastian Payne)评判。这两支队伍之间的比赛气氛非常紧张，以至于选择保爵禄香槟酒的人一度拒绝进入场地。
In the event, the scores of wine writers Oz Clarke, Matthew Jukes, Will Lyons, Peter Richards MW, Anthony Rose, Michael Schuster and Joe Wadsack were even closer to those of the trade team of five Masters of Wine and two Master Sommeliers. The trade won by just six points. But the top individual taster was, much to his surprise, Anthony Rose of The Independent with 176 marks. “I must say, I have new respect for you hacks,” judge Sebastian Payne MW grudgingly admitted. “You’re actually quite good at your job.”
在这场活动中，拥有五位葡萄酒大师和两位大师级侍酒师 (Master Sommelier)的葡萄酒行业队仅以六分的优势获胜，而且作家队选手奥兹•克拉克(Oz Clarke)、马修•胡克斯(Matthew Jukes)、威尔•里昂斯(Will Lyons)、彼得•理查兹(Peter Richards)（葡萄酒大师）、安东尼•罗斯(Anthony Rose)、麦克尔•舒斯特(Michael Schuster)和乔•瓦德萨克(Joe Wadsack)的分数与行业队的分数很接近。最佳品尝员的获得者令人意外地由独立报(The Independent)的安东尼•罗斯获得，得分为176。这样的结果让作为评委的葡萄酒大师塞巴斯蒂安•佩恩无奈地说：“我得承认，自己现在已经对你们这些文人墨客刮目相看了，你们的水平之高让我大为意外。”