B Samples

Ireland is well known for its world class show jumpers. Both the horses and the riders. Our very own Cian (pr. keen!) O'Connor was stripped of the Gold medal at the last Olympic Games. His horse was found to have been doped.

This month it's the turn of our brilliant Jessica Kuertin. She is brilliant. Last year she ranked Number 2 in the world. That's impressive in a sport dominated by money and class. It shows true skill.

Jessica's problem is that a banned substance was found in her mare CastleForbes Maike just after they had jointly pocketed a hundred grand for an impressive Grand Prix win.

Rather than give the money back and pay a lousy 500 Swiss Franc fine (an available option it seems) Jessica has opted to have the B sample opened and analysed.

da dum

Do B samples ever differ from their A counterparts? No idea. At least no idea when it comes to horses. But they often differ when it comes to wine!

I viewed the results of an interesting 'taste-off' recently. Forty wines had been whittled to six by an expert panel. One was chosen and received a generous five hundred case order. Wasn't I lucky'', said the delighted importer, ''that the winery could get the '06 tank sample over in time for the taste-off.''

tut tut, I thought. A tank sample at a commercial buyers tasting! tut tut. Sure, if we keep an A sample from the tank sample used at the 'taste-off' and compare it to a B sample which will arrive for sale on the shelves they will be different beasts altogether. Sorry. Wines. Not beasts. Not horses.

At this point I began delving back into an old conspiracy theory that I have harboured for years. It's a black thought and really should be kept to myself. (It should by rights be kept for drunk occasions and other excusable times.)

here goes........ Don't wine makers present wines into competition simply to win the award? Afterwards they supply something a lot less expensive and dumber to the poor fool the customer with gold medals draped around the neck of the bottle???

Do wine buyers actually keep A and B samples in their wine libraries? Do they test and taste the B Samples against the wines they contracted to buy? Do they decide to send the wine back if both are not the same?

They will if the wine is off. They will if the wine is crap. They will if the wine is dangerous.

Will they send it back if the wine is different? No they won't. Most times they won't even notice the difference. When they do they put it down to 'development'. Bottle development.

The wine trade is blessed by the fact that it works with a product which is expected to change. If it turns out that the change has actually made the product a poor drink then it can be put down to product development, bottle variation, ageing difficulties and so on. At times the wine may not be showing well at all. It may have cost a fortune at a recent auction. What do you say to that??? "It's sleeping".

Isn't it brilliant. So long as it doesn't poison people the trade can get away with just about anything. Even though it's sold as a consumable beverage it has even managed to avoid ingredient labelling.

If only Jessica's horse was a bottle of wine. Sorry judges. It developed a bit over the past few days. Sorry about the sediment in her pee. Doesn't she look great!

If only we were sure that the big wine importers insisted on B Sample tastings. It's not just about having a chemical analysis from the winery to hand in case of litigation. It's about knowing that the customer is being looked after by a trade that knows what it's doing.

After all we are being asked to swallow an awful lot these days.

Red Bull takes a Hammering

Seems that a German consumer mag has just slated Red Bull. It says things like Red Bull contains unnecessary vitamins, questionable substances and in effect doesn't actually do what it says on the tin.

The Irish have always taken Red Bull as a given. No-one seems to have questioned whether it works. Of course it does. Man; the buzz... But what does 'works' really mean?

We know it palpitates the heart. So does jogging. We know it can fry the brain. So do scary movies. Watch a scary movie with strong instant coffee. Nothing wrong with jogging, movies or even instant....well, that's going a bit far now.....

What do the Germans mean when they say that Red Bull 'is lacking'? Its certainly not their absolutely incredible series of sponsored sporting events.

It seems that they expected the strange ingredient mix to be a semi mystical concoction that produced mystical reactions in the brain. They expected it do what it says on the tin. Give you wings. God love them but they must be a tough lot in Germany. If I down a few of these buggers I don't need wings. I levitate!

The wider debate is a good one though. If a product claims to give you 'wings'. then it needs to do just that. If a product makes a claim based on the ingredients in the can then those ingredients should be analysed before the great unwashed is allowed to indulge. Surely the point about beverages and foodstuffs is that they need to be sold based on what they are capable of doing inside your body and not whether they give you mystical wings or not. If it turns out that the wings thing doesn't actually happen then its an advertising issue and hard luck you if you believed it in the first place.

Back in 2000 Ross Cooney in Limerick died after downing four cans of Red Bull and then playing a basketball match. His heart failed. The coroner did not associate the drink as the cause. The French, Norwegians and Danes will not licence Red Bull for sale. A CBC News report quoted a French food and safety nutritionist as saying that “There are various side effects for each one of these three substances, which vary in degrees of severity. And they can also interact with each other.” i.e. what the hell is going on with the ingredients (Glucose, Caffeine, Glucuronolactone, Niacin (niacinamide), Sodium, Citrate and Inosotrol) once they enter your body?

The Canadians licenced the product with the following health warning on the can.

Not recommended for children, pregnant or breast-feeding women, caffeine sensitive persons or to be mixed with alcohol. Do not consume more than 500 ml per day.

If it stretches your heart and causes memory loss due to a pseudo hangover effect then its a food and safety issue and it should be hard luck to the manufacturer who tried to sell the product on its perceived benefits rather than its nutritional value. Boring as it sounds Red Bull seems to improve concentration and reaction times in the short term but really only gives you wings if you mix it with alcohol. So what's the mixer? The alcohol or the Red Bull ingredients?

I remember seeing Guinness ads as a kid. They went like this:

Guinness Give you Power

Guinness Gives you Strength

Back home I began drinking Guinness in earnest. Later I might add than when I was a kid. We just believed that Guinness was Good for You. I'm still drinking. I'm still waiting!

How do we Assess Wine

Many years ago I was teaching an 'Introduction to Wine' class. As most of my instruction at the time was spontaneous I once again drifted off into something that I found particularly interesting. You know, the geek teacher thing.


I was trying to describe the shape of taste! More specifically I was attempting to show in a visual way that grapes taste different to each other. So, I suggested that we construct a multidimensional table with loads of mapping points. Then we get onto the web (at this point a few of my students asked me what the web was??) and every time someone, anywhere in the world. tasted that grape type they would be asked to enter an x against the strength or intensity of each of the variables in the table. The idea was we would end up with millions of objective inputs thus smoothing out bias in the tasting process.


Then I proceeded to draw the 'hypothetical' results! I showed that Chardonnay would most likely be bulbous in four dimensions while Riesling would stretch out into a long thin line. It would be a bit like Surf Rider meets The Thing. One slim and sleek; the other fat and globulous.

Yesterday I came across a line in The Best of Wine in Ireland 2007. It's a good book. If you live in Ireland its quite useful. Page 203 titled, 'How the wines were assessed' concludes, "After separate tasting the two tasters compared their scores and comments. Remarkably, demonstrating the objectiveness of this process, in about 85 percent of cases the two tasters spontaneously agreed their marks to within 1 point out of 20. If they could not agree the editor was asked to adjudicate."

It was a blind tasting and the tasters were academically well qualified. But, what if it was blind and the tasters weren't qualified at all? Would that negate a result to within one point of each other if say the question being asked was something like, " Is this wine?" Clearly the editor would have been a busy bee that day!

These examples are extreme. They would be the basis for bad law. I do contend however that they give credence to my belief that as the wine trade itself has decided that its tastings are objective then it is an inherently biased trade. There is a small cohort of 'expert' tasters determining the shape of the grape in the glass. It is a self fulfilling prophecy that if the experts say Chardonnay should be thin and score it accordingly then it will indeed be made thin. It is equally prophetic of me to say that if I take two tasters from the same academic background with similar time on their hands, with similar trade backgrounds they will think and taste like each other in at least 85% of cases! Who is brave enough to say that both Parker and Robinson are correct.

Maybe the great unwashed has been saying this to us over the years and we have been muddling along gracefully in blissful
ignorance of the fact that the sheep are the successful ones. Indeed Vitis Vinifera accordingly is more successful than the saps who make it into wine in the first place! Perhaps our bias is being prejudiced by Vinifera herself! Has anyone ever given it some real thought as to why some of her progeny have been abandoned to history forever while try as we might to extinguish others they seem to cling on regardless?

Think about it! Who actually decided that Sauvignon Blanc would take over from Chardonnay?

It wasn't the wine trade. Was it the consumer? God forbid....well, I'd believe that before giving the trade an award. If we know the answer then fancy pants what's coming next?? What's coming down the tracks Mr Wine Expert?

Are we tasting to some predefined bias and if so are we setting the bias or is it the consumer or......... is it Vinifera? Are we the sheep after all? Does it matter what we think so long as we give in and seem to set the rules as to how to enjoy ourselves?


One thing I am certain about. No matter what Vinifera does to us she can't change the shape of her offspring. Another thing I am certain of is that if we get enough people saying the same thing it won't matter what she thinks she can do to us. Take that Vinifera! We need everyone to be an expert or all the experts to be everyone.

And another thing that I am absolutely certain of: Chardonnay is a Thing!

Wine Labels...and Canada

There's a wine 'debate' doing the rounds right now in relation to labelling. For once it's not about ingredients but more to do with when is wine white and when is a grape not white. I speak of White Zinfandel, often referred to as White Zin which as everyone really knows (?) is not white at all but pink.


It has been decided that from next year on the term will be illegal in the EU. The Brits seem to have jumped the gun and technically brought the ban into force straight away and the Californians who are ultimatley responsible don't seem to have been told!!


It's really all a bit of a giggle given that most of these wines are so sweet and poorly made that my problem with them is that they are called wine in the first place.


Most label difficulties between North America and Europe have arisen because them over there have so little history attached to their wines that they coasted for a long time stealing all the place names they could pronounce from Europe. It's still common to find Californian Chablis and even 'Burgundy' made in Texas!! They are not allowed to export these labels to the EU and to be fair they are attempting to ditch them. After all Europe would appear to prefer to drink to varietal labels anyway and very often a California AVA wine will outshine many French AC's. (that's American Viticultural Area v Appellation Controlee; get with the script people)

Sometimes I find the whole thing ridiculous. Take the Canadians. They have succesfully developed a wine program that makes very good wines. The best of these is entitled to apply for the VQA symbol (Vintners Quality Alliance). One of the unique success stories has been their promotion of the Ice Wine category. You like sweet? You like quality? You adore Canadian Ice Wine. Protected name in Canada? Well you would think so given that they fought tooth and nail to have the labels accepted by the EU in the first place.

When the EU allowed them in there was cause for some sups in the barrel rooms that night.


But if you go into any LCB (Liqour Control Board) store in Canada - the Canadians are still treated as children by their provinces -you will find a bottle labelled 'Ice Wine with Brandy' on sale. Bloody Hell. I kid you not. Here's the photo.......




Ok it's a small bottle and a very small label. Small difficulty. Well........ they do call it wine. So, what's the problem? Don't the Portuguese make Port this way? No. Don't the Sherry producers add alcohol. Yeah but a whole lot more goes into sherry. Vin du Natural? Nah, they finished this wine and then topped it up! Why would anyone brave sub zero temperatures to pick frozen grapes that have hardly any juice in them just to muck the finished product up by adding brandy? Well, to make sweet wine with bite is one answer. The real answer here is that finally the Canadians have some success and at least a little history. They then immedietaly abuse, debase and copy their own name!! Just the same as if it was a Chablis or even a 'Sherry'.

Well now, have a look at this. It's not bad. Drinks well. It's Canadian Chardonnay Sherry. Now we're getting places. Not only have the Canadians managed to develop a wine program but somehow they also managed to adapt Vitis Vinifera clones to their harsh and long winter climate. That was no mean feat. Congratulations all round. Last year I tasted some Clos Jordanne (Boisset) Pinot Noir from the barrel and have to admit that it was exceptional wine.

Imagine. On the verge of showing the world that you have a Vinifera based wine industry capable of impressing the Bourgogne. The Holy Grail.

Oh, and we make Chardonnay Sherry as well. You should try some.........

Here's the happy couple

White Zin? No problem. Blue Nun Pink. It's out there.......