In a much-reported experiment, a little over a decade ago, Frederic Brochet of the University of Bordeaux gave some wine to a group of wine-knowledgeable people and asked them to describe what they experienced. Unbeknown to them, he had poured them two glasses of the same white wine, but tinted one with a red colouring that would not affect either the odour or the taste. Mostly, the subjects described the supposed red wine in a way that was very different from the white, using language usually associated with red wine.

Top caption: Wilhelm Pienaar, red winemaker at Nederburg with Pamela, one of the sightless guest who enjoyed a tutored wine tasting, cellar tour and lunch at Nederburg.

In 2001, when the media covered the results of this, the first part of his experiment, many relished the incident for exposing the experts as fallible. They saw it as a compelling example of just how much pretense and pretension there is when it comes to wine. When the furore died down, on closer examination of the experiment, it seemed that what it really demonstrated was no more than that perceptual bias can lead us all astray and that experts, because they have more experience, are often more susceptible to it.

So what happens when people taste wine blind? Really blind, as in when they can’t see?

In mid-November, Nederburg hosted a group of partially sighted and entirely blind guests, who were given six wines to taste, presented by the cellar’s red winemaker, Wilhelm Pienaar.

He asked the group, accompanied by sighted Rotarians who had arranged the visit, to describe the first wine by nosing and then tasting it. Juanita, who is altogether blind, said it was a fruity wine that reminded her of kiwis, and she agreed, when one of her companions used the descriptor, of litchis also. She liked it as a refreshing, sipping wine and was quite confident she was drinking a white wine. What was it? Nederburg’s recently launched 2012 56HUNDRED Chenin Blanc.

Juanita drinks wine but it isn’t something she’s given much attention. When it’s there she enjoys it.

The next wine was also white, she said and had been in oak. How did she know? What did oak smell and taste like? “I can’t tell you but it is sort of spicy.” She called it a serious wine and she didn’t like it as much as the first wine but she thought it would taste better if it was served with food. The wine was the recently released 2011 Young Airhawk, a fully wooded Sauvignon Blanc that forms part of the Heritage Heroes quartet of gourmet wines, very much intended to be enjoyed with food.

When she picked up wine number three she said it was a red wine. “It has a richer smell and more weight. It is also very fruity and there is a dry element to it. You can also taste a bit of wood but not too much.” The wine turned out to be the 2012 56HUNDRED Cabernet Sauvignon.

She also had no doubt that wine number four was red but it seemed not to be so fruity and was heavier in smell and taste. She didn’t recognise it as the same cultivar as the previous wine. The wine in question was the 2011 Winemaster’s Reserve Cabernet Sauvignon and didn’t glide over her palate quite as smoothly. It had more grip.

There seemed to be a pattern to the way the tasting was progressing. White to red and young to old. So what was the fifth wine? “Isn’t this white? I’m sure it’s white because of the acid in the smell and the taste. I think I can pick up wood but not very much. This is a big wine. Very serious. It reminds me of the second wine but just a little bit.”

She was tasting the 2011 vintage of Nederburg’s Ingenuity White that recently earned a five-star rating in the 2013 edition of the annual Platter’s South African Wine Guide. Made from eight varietals, it is dominated by Sauvignon blanc and the entire blend is about 30% wooded.

The last wine was a cinch. “It’s very sweet.”

“How do you mean?” she was asked. “Was it sugary or like honey, maybe like a fruit cordial?”

“There is a trace of honey but it’s much more like dried fruit. Yes, definitely dried fruit. Different kinds. Raisins, peaches and apricots. A little bit like a liqueur.”

The wine she was describing was the 2011 Winemaster’s Reserve Noble Late Harvest.

Without sight, she had been forced to focus on applying her other senses and she believed this is what gave her the capacity to identify what she was drinking. But she thought that if she had been exposed to more wines, more often and had experienced more nuance in variation, she might not have been so confident or so accurate.

As for some of the other tasters? Many were not able to distinguish between red or white.

Did it matter?

Absolutely not, said most of the group. “It was fun, it was interesting and we learned more from this wine tasting than from any of the others we’ve been to. It was interactive and we were encouraged to give our opinions and it didn’t matter if we were right or wrong,” said another person.

One partially sighted person wanted to know why the carbonated apple drink he had with lunch after the tasting, seemed so awful. Wilhelm explained that that was a subject for another day. “Sometimes it depends on what you have tasted before or what food you are eating at the time”.

As guests left the tasting, they could choose between tasting notes in braille, enlarged type or a regular version.