When Wine "Connoisseurs" Are Given the Same Glass Of Wine Over and Over
policymic.com
policymic.com
This doesn't mean there's nothing to tasting wine, though.
If the test had been to identify a really bad bottle, versus a good one, I'm sure they all would've got it. If you give someone two reds, both of decent quality, sure, a blind difference would be hard to detect.
But, give someone a corked bottle and an uncorked bottle, I'm sure they'll figure it out. (This does not refer to screw on tops vs corks, but cork contaminated wine)
Most of the people referred to as "philistines" by the author probably do not know what a corked bottle is.
I'll tell you, it tastes horrible. And once someone has helped you taste what "corked" is, you'll remember forever.
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1755-0238.2008....
They found that individual judges were generally not very consistent in their rankings but that if you use small groups of judges then you can get better reproducibility.
The exact numbers are in the paper, but about 67% of the experts had statistically significant reliability for red wines and about 50% had statistically significant reliability for whites.
Also interesting is John Cleese's film about wine in which he conducted a blind taste test that found that most tasters couldn't discriminate between white and red wine. I couldn't find it online, but the whole thing is worth watching if you're interested in wine.