Wine judging inconsistent say study

A four year study into wine judging at the California State Fair has found that judges rarely rate a wine the same way twice.

According to a report in the Daily Telegraph, judges were given repeat samples of the same wine during blind tasting sessions and only one in ten regularly gave a wine the same rating. The remaining 90% of judges failed to give wines the same or similar scores in repeated tastings, though it appeared that judges were more consistent in their scoring with wines they did not like.

Dr Robert Hodgson, who has judged at the event and carried out the research, wanted to know how it is that a particular wine can win a gold medal at one competition and fail to win any award at another.

His study is published in the Journal of Wine Economics and was carried out with the agreement of the California State Fair.