It’s really just about joy and pleasure | New Brief #269

Sometimes you get the feeling that wine enthusiasts are more focussed on competition and excelling than anything else. In Sweden, this year’s blind tasting championship has just taken place. Someone won. Someone became Sweden’s best blind taster. In France, the big wine magazine La Revue du Vin de France arranges the world blind tasting championship every year, with participants from 43 countries in 2025. “What does it really take to become a skilled blind taster?” wrote a columnist in a newsletter I just read. What does it matter?

Sometimes you almost get the feeling that it is more important to “guess right” than to worry about if the wine is delicious or not.

This is also reflected in today’s strange focus on titles and diplomas in the wine industry. It is as if you have to have some odd letter combination after your name or some educational title to have any credibility. Guess correctly on the exam and you become a wine expert. A strange focus in an industry that is really just about sentiment and subjectivity on the consumer side.

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Calling all wine lovers:

Do you know someone who might be interested in a wine tour?

Please tell them about BKWine Wine Tours! We do wine tours like no other.
A leading wine tour operator since more than 20 years.

Thank you in advance for your help and support!

(If you have Swedish friends, please know that we have a separate,
more extensive travel program in Swedish: BKWine Vinresor.)

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“Guess” is often the right word. In the “world championship” a full score is 312 points. The winning team had 135 points – almost two-thirds wrong. Anyone who tastes a lot of wine “blind” knows that it is really difficult to identify a wine blind (even if you have earned some letter combination or diploma), even a wine that is supposed to be easy to identify, such as a sauvignon blanc. Sometimes you get lucky or come across an “archetypical” wine. But what exactly is “typical”? Typicality, or typicity, is a concept that you should be wary of. It is definitely not a quality criterion. An oaked Chablis is atypical. A juicy Barolo is atypical. But they can still be delicious. Are they poor quality?

Once upon a time, wine was an important foodstuff (or so they say). Water could be polluted and dangerous. Wine was a safer drink. But that was then. Now wine is nothing more than a luxury product. I don’t mean “luxury” in the sense of expensive, hard to get or rare. Rather, something that is simply not necessary.

There are things that are indispensable. For example, water, food and heat. There are things that we can completely live without, for example wine. Wine is a luxury we can treat ourselves to.

So what is the point of wine? If the point is not to “guess correctly”?

Basically, it is about enjoyment, pleasure and joy. It is something that we enjoy because we (hopefully) think it is good, and it is a source of joy, especially if we can share the wine with acquaintances and friends.

But there is certainly a point in wine courses, wine education, blind tastings and trying to identify wines. It sharpens the mind and – above all – it forces you to decide what you think. You learn more and with more knowledge often comes more joy and enjoyment.

At home, we actually tastes blind every day at the dinner table. Every dinner we do BKWine’s little private blind tasting competition in two stages and three steps. But I’ll have to tell you about that another time.

Travel

Now it’s time to plan your trip for this year and next.

In the fall/autumn we do Bordeaux, Burgundy and Champagne.

We do not have any places left on the winter wine tours, but soon we will publish the entire autumn travel program for 2026, as well as the winter of 2027. You will get a sneak peek below.

More info on our wine tours here. “World’s Top Wine Tours“. Tours with the people who know wine and who have an unrivalled experience of wine and tours.

Travel in wine regions with someone you trust.

Enjoy the Brief!

Britt & Per

Wine editors to the national encyclopedia, Forbes.com contributors, award-winning wine book authors, wine tour advisors to the UN and national wine organisations, wine judges … and, above all, passionate wine travellers.

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