merican wine judging has problems. The practice of “blind” tasting, in which judges are deprived of all information about a wine except its varietal (and sometimes its vintage), creates an information vacuum in which any diversity or distinctiveness of character appears as a flaw. Coupled with the infamous 100-point scoring or some other criteria-free, linear rating scheme, blind tasting by varietal has hit the wall. Current tasting methodology ends up telling us nothing about whether the wine is doing its job.