the Davis test

[trillium]

I'm wondering if you ever bumped into this test or something like it, and if you did, how'd you do?

regards,

trillium

[WHT]

I'm wondering if you ever bumped into this test or something like it, and if you did, how'd you do?

regards,

trillium

Are you refering to a test like the Iowa Test? Or something else?

[Pan]

What is it?

[Randall Grahm]

Dear Trillium,

I'm not familiar w/ the Davis Test. Is this the ability to withstand 2-4 years of UC Davis? Please furnish some more info, if you would. Thanks, RG.

[slkinsey]

From this page:

Story No. 2: Wine and noses. That same New Yorker food issue contains an article by humorist Calvin Trillin, who set out to investigate the so-called “Davis Test”—a purported blind tasting of red and white wines that supposedly proved even experts can’t always tell the difference between the two. Trillin came to the source: UC Davis’ Ann Noble, professor of viticulture and enology and expert on sensory science, whose wine aroma wheel has helped scores of novices differentiate between a Pinot Noir and a Zinfandel. Noble’s verdict: The “Davis Test” is an urban myth. The test she gives her students asks them to identify the varietal by use of smell alone. “The minute you put it in your mouth,” she told Trillin, “it’s game over.” To prove her point, Noble offered Trillin two black glasses, one filled with red wine, the other with white, for him to taste. He got it wrong.

[Fat Guy]

Wait a second. There's a difference between red and white wine? I thought the color thing was all about matching the wine to your decor.

[Bill Klapp]

And if you mix the two together in equal measure, you get rose!

[trillium]

I was indeed wondering if RG himself had been given the red vs. white test, and if he passed. Surviving any amount of time at a bastion of higher learning, is of course, its own special sort of test, but that isn't what I meant.

I love reading Trillin on wine...his riff on preferring labels with mountains at a mid-distance makes me laugh every time I read it.

On red + white = rose, I was really amused to read about Mr. Pepin mixing old red and white wines together to drink with dinner in his autobiography. He claims not to do it any more, at least around his daughter, who is now the family wine expert.

regards,

trillium

[Schneier]

And if you mix the two together in equal measure, you get rose!

It's not polite to bled wines at the table.

Bruce

[Randall Grahm]

To All:

I'm not sure if I would be particularly capable of passing the test. There are certain white wines I know of that certainly smell like red wines. I think that this sort of category confusion is tremendously interesting. V. Nabakov was a well-known synesthete and I'm sure that he would have had difficulty was the Davis test, indeed with anything coming out of Davis. R.