How Did Blind Tasting Become the Internet’s Favorite Way to Learn About Wine?

“Blind tasting!” announces a Zoomer in a graphic tee as he pops the cork of a wine bottle covered in a sock. He pours a glass for his twin brother to swirl, sniff, sip, and describe. The tasting-twin thinks for a moment — sometimes it’s a salty white that makes him think coastal Spain, other times a rustic red that brings him to Italy. After he gives his final answer, his brother removes the sock and reveals the wine.

The guess is usually wrong. But each video has millions of views.

The fans in the comments look a lot like the dudes on camera — young people without formal wine education who are far cries from the oenophiles of past generations. And while the videos might appeal to buttoned-up sommeliers and barkeeps with wine keys hanging off carabiners, they mostly attract the demographic that has the greatest financial potential to revolutionize any industry: passively scrolling normies.

Blind tasting was once an insider-only practice for wine professionals looking to learn and detect wines. But in the last couple of years, food and beverage publications, internet-savvy sommeliers, and wine “influencers” have been posting no-frills blind tastings across social media — and they are reaching audiences other forms of wine media haven’t.

These new-age blinds are set in humble apartments, high-end New York City restaurants, and in one case, a pontoon boat with the wine poured in red Solo cups.

And as wine outlets have gotten in on the trend, it’s difficult to see past. Wine Folly posts guess-the-wine carousels. Wine Enthusiast splashes wine in contestants’ faces to guess. This very publication has a YouTube series of head-to-head blinds.

But it’s the individual social media personalities like the Super Vino Bros, the twin-brother duo who’ve become natural wine’s unexpected poster boys, Marie Cheslik, a Michelin-starred wine director and educator, and others who kick-started the phenomenon.

Old-school wine education, repackaged

Blind tasting isn’t anything new. After catching on in the 1970s with studious drinkers and certificate candidates, it has since become a common method for palate-training. Tasting a wine without knowing what it is allows drinkers to perceive qualities more minutely and instantaneously, which are then reinforced after identifying the grapes, regions, and terroirs.

If the 2013 “Somm” documentary gave consumers a glimpse into the practice of blind tasting, the videos populating social media feeds pull back the curtain entirely.

“What I’m trying to cultivate, actually, is the biggest tasting group ever, and I want people to feel comfortable and empowered and smart and like they’re learning,” Sarah Looper, Master of Wine candidate and New York-sommelier behind @loopersomm on Instagram and TikTok, says.

“It’s what the new generation wants. They want something easier, faster, funny, and attractive. Watching someone open a bottle of 2005 Barolo and say, ‘Wait four hours before drinking this bottle’ is not funny.”

The videos gamify a key part of many formal sommelier examinations and put a lighthearted spin on what can be a career-defining test. While certificate exams give candidates an average of five minutes for each wine, wine influencers squeeze their blinds into 60 seconds to make it stand out amid a feed’s grab bag of content. “It’s 8 a.m., and I have 60 seconds to guess what the wine is,” Cheslik, wearing anything from a tie-dye T-shirt to a bathing suit, says at the beginning of each video.

Ryan and Chris Goydos, the Super Vino Bros, began posting educational wine content in 2022 after their curiosity for natural wine struck during Covid. Almost their entire journey in wine has been documented online, and though the duo was inspired by and wanted to mimic blind-tasting wine professionals from a beginner’s standpoint, they are now known for pretty much always getting the wine wrong. They attribute much of their success in views and followership to their humble approach: Circulating their relatable videos across social media, the Bros view themselves as an entry point to wine for a previously uninterested audience.

“It’s what the new generation wants,” says Beatrice Zocche, a sommelier and bartender at Cellar 36 in lower Manhattan. “They want something easier, faster, funny, and attractive. Watching someone open a bottle of 2005 Barolo and say, ‘Wait four hours before drinking this bottle’ is not funny. It’s painful for a 24-year-old person. But for someone to open Instagram and look at [the Super Vino Bros] open a Barolo and listen to them is easier.”

Cokie Ponikvar, an advanced sommelier and Master of Wine candidate who documents her certification journey across her social media accounts, sees this evolution from inside the big-name institutions. At the Advanced Sommelier Course and Examination in Dallas this past June, presentation slides showed pictures of her and the Super Vino Bros to demonstrate the younger faces of wine. And though some companies are considering new approaches in response to millennial and zoomer disinterest in wine, the pace of change remains slow.

“I have the conversation all the time with brands that [are] willing to spend $40,000 hosting an event to educate 10 somms in New York City that might add one of [their] wines on the list,” says Ponikvar. “You can spend that money on social media and reach half a million young people, the exact age bracket that you claim to want.”

A guessing game, not a getting-it-right game

Short-form blind tastings allow drinkers to describe wine without any penalization for getting it wrong. All the while, they expose viewers to different grapes, regions, soil types, and other qualities that characterize a bottle. Understandably, Cheslik was apprehensive to post videos of her guessing incorrectly at first — wine professionals feel intense pressure when guessing a wine in front of their peers. Once she let go of her ego, though, she noticed viewers latched onto the vulnerability.

“We want to be as raw and authentic as possible and tell other people that it’s OK to not get it right, especially for wine,” Ryan of the Bros says. “It’s OK to not be completely perfect. I think that that’s the fun of it. The fun of it is trying to get as close as possible.”

There remains some ground to cover in ridding wine of its snobby connotations. One person involved in and tied to the Court of Master Sommeliers community told me that some sommeliers have a running joke about how off the mark many blind tastings on social media are.

But others in the industry see value in newbies watching the influencers’ deliberation process, no matter how imperfect.

“In a culture of instantaneous gratification, I think it’s good for people to slow down and try to contemplate what they’re smelling and tasting,” says Trevor Kellogg, general manager at Discovery Wines in Manhattan’s East Village.

Blind tasting’s democratization across social media is reshaping the ultimate goal of the practice — one of being more intentional and in tune with what’s being consumed. It gets some drinkers’ noses out from the wine books and into their glasses, and all the while, it has other non-drinkers guessing along.

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