TN: Weird and wacky wines at SFJoe's.

Thor,a single-blind flight is one in which the wines are known but the order is not. But you already knew that.

The single-blind/double-blind distinction is a useful one. It is a shame that the phrases were borrowed from another field in which they happen to have different meanings, but certainly worse things have happened.
 
Thor,a single-blind flight is one in which the wines are known but the order is not. But you already knew that.
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Actually, I didn't. I'm not good with foreign languages. It's a failing of mine.

I'd just like to introduce a little quibble: I didn't ask what a single-blind flight was, I asked what "single-blind" was.
 
Thanks for the note on the Nervi. I was tempted to buy it when I was in NY, but didn't get around to it. Looks like I dodged a bullet.

Did anyone try the 1965 Nervi? Any opinions? Is Nervi a good Gattinara producer?
 
Ah, sorry. I had assumed you were better at languages.

Consider the set W of all wines. Now consider a subset w contained in W. To taste single-blind is to taste with the prior knowledge that the wine in question is a member of w. As an aside, since every set is a subset of itself, tasting double-blind arises naturally as a special case of tasting single-blind.
 
Ah, I understand now. So subset w was "wines Brad might bring to Joe's place," whereas set W was "wines," and this key piece of differentiation was what made the tasting double- rather than single-blind, which would have been completely different, because Joe's guests would then have known that Brad brought the wine in addition to knowing that it was a wine, whereas because it was double-blind all they knew was that it was a wine and Brad brought it.

Thanks for explaining that. It makes perfect sense.
 
I just want to make sure I'm clear on this, now, so I don't screw it up again...

1) I bring one bottle to Joe's place and serve it. This is not-blind.

2) I bring one bottle to Joe's place and serve it blind, not telling anyone anything about its identity and pretending that I have no idea in which order I'm serving this one bottle. This is double-blind.

3) I bring one bottle to Joe's place and serve it blind, telling everyone that this bottle they're being served now is the bottle that's being served now, thus providing them with information on the order in which the one bottle of wine is being served, but still nothing about its identity. This is single-blind. Also tautologically-blind.

The key difference I was missing before is that Joe's guests knew neither the order nor the identity of of the one bottle that Brad served blind, whereas if he'd told them that he was serving the one bottle to them as he was doing so, they'd have known the order and thus would have been doing single-blind tasting. It seems to me that a fun variation on this sort of tasting would be to switch the order of that one bottle, so that tasters had no idea whether they were tasting the bottle or the bottle. Would that be triple-blind?

Anyway, I can see why Brad wanted to avoid single-blinding the bottle, because that much additional information really would have given the game away, wouldn't it?
 
originally posted by Arjun Mendiratta:
Oh, I see. This is really about Brad, isn't it?
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The way I see it, it's about clever people trying to outclever the next clever fellow, but that's par for the course here.
 
We must insure Thor does not get free reign!
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I'm already unsure I get free rain.

The way I see it, it's about clever people trying to outclever the next clever fellow, but that's par for the course here.
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I think my contributions could also be summed up as where the fuck is Coad???
 
Seriously, I was thrown off by his use of "double-blind" in this context, and had to reread the note. My faith in the kindness of humanity has also been reaffirmed by Arjun's spirited defense of Kane.
 
There's someone for everyone.

Actually, I'm dismayed to discover I misunderstood Brad's definition -- which matches neither mine nor Arjun's -- right from the start.

It was double-blind to them. They had no idea what I was bringing and I had it in a bag.
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The definition I've always gone by is that if no one knows in advance what wine is being brought and it arrives in a bag
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I didn't realize until now that it was a simple matter of counting:

unknown wine = +1 to blindness
bag (or any cover?) = +1 to blindness

...and so forth. So, putting four bags and a box around it, then wrapping the thing with decorative paper from the Hallmark store, plus not telling anyone what the wine is, would be septuple-blind.

And thus, the only way it could have been single-blind is if Brad bagged it but told them what it was, or didn't tell them what it was but kept the bottle in plain sight. Or, I suppose, blindfolded everyone and then told them what the unbagged wine was as he poured it.

This is all very much simpler than my fancy experimental protocols or Arjun's complicated set theories.
 
originally posted by Thor:
There's someone for everyone.

Actually, I'm dismayed to discover I misunderstood Brad's definition -- which matches neither mine nor Arjun's -- right from the start.

It was double-blind to them. They had no idea what I was bringing and I had it in a bag.
Click to expand...
The definition I've always gone by is that if no one knows in advance what wine is being brought and it arrives in a bag
Click to expand...
I didn't realize until now that it was a simple matter of counting:

unknown wine = +1 to blindness
bag (or any cover?) = +1 to blindness

...and so forth. So, putting four bags and a box around it, then wrapping the thing with decorative paper from the Hallmark store, plus not telling anyone what the wine is, would be septuple-blind.

And thus, the only way it could have been single-blind is if Brad bagged it but told them what it was, or didn't tell them what it was but kept the bottle in plain sight. Or, I suppose, blindfolded everyone and then told them what the unbagged wine was as he poured it.

This is all very much simpler than my fancy experimental protocols or Arjun's complicated set theories.
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Wow. I haven't seen you so obtuse since you and Troiano tried to figure out where Boston begins.

Single blind is when people know in advance that a wine will be part of a tasting, but the wines are bagged, so you don't know exactly where it is in the tasting. That and the double blind definition are nothing new as it pertains to wines at a tasting. It is widely used and accepted amongst wine lovers and your semantic buffoonery won't change that.
 
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