Blind Tasting with the Palate Club

I love blind tastings! There is no better way to tell your true opinion of a wine without being influenced by the label or other knowledge of the wine. The online wine club Palate Club allows you to do that for every wine you receive.

A blind tasting kit, either white or red, is first ordered to get started with the Palate Club. I selected the red blind tasting kit and waited for the bottles. When I received the blind tasting kit, it came in a single box dividing the four 375ml bottles with each bottle individually wrapped in tissue paper to hide the label. A sticker on the paper with a number was the only indicator of what the wine was which I later cross-linked with the Palate Club smartphone app. I downloaded the Palate Club app from my phone’s app store and logged into my account. The account was already preset with the four wines I received.

A 375ml bottle of wine is enough for four to six people if you are doing just a tasting, so I decided to share with my partner, and we began the tasting. I poured a tasting size for each of us of the first wine, and after sniffing, swirling, and tasting, we decided the wine was good, but not necessarily our favorite style of wine. I liked it a little bit more than she did.

Now, this blind tasting is nothing like a sommelier test where you have to tell different characteristics of the wine. This is simply, do you like or not, and to rate it on a scale of 1 to 5 with 5 being the highest. That’s it!

I opened the Palate Club app on my smartphone and went to the tasting tab. After making sure the wine with the same number was displayed, I rated the wine with my score (that’s the one that mattered! LOL). Once I entered my rating, the wine revealed itself.

After a wine is revealed, there is also information about the wine such as tasting notes, winery information, and more. It was interesting reading about the wine and if that actually matched the style of wine I like. One thing I couldn’t figure out is how I could buy more of the wine if I liked it. I would think that would be a benefit of trying a wine.

After we rated the four wines, I was then given a personalized profile based on the ratings I had given to the wines. The app uses scientific formulas to pinpoint exactly what wines you like, so the more you taste, the more data it has to know what you like. Now that it knew what I liked, the app could also suggest other wines I might like.

We finished the blind tasting and another family member visited, and he also did the blind tasting. He learned which wines he liked, and they were different than what we liked. Again, blind tasting is great!

I made some observations during the entire process.

• One of the bottles I received had a screw cap and the others had corks.
• Even though the bottles had tissue paper wrapped around them, I could see the foil capsules if present. I could see that one of the bottles said DOCG which gave me some indication where the wine came from.
• We had a California Cabernet Sauvignon and the app said it was a 2018, but the bottle’s label said 2017.
• After I found out the wine, I would like to know how much it cost. The Palate Club’s website states individual wines cost $17 to $59.
• You can personalize your subscription with things like the number of bottles, red or white, price, and level of discovery which means to send wines more like you want towards more wines to discover.
• I couldn’t tell if all bottles received in the future with the subscription are 375ml or 750ml? I assume it would be 750ml, but they may continue to be the smaller size.
• A sparkling wine choice is coming soon.

The Palate Club is a great way to discover new wines from around the world that I might never purchase or even be aware of. If you also love blind tasting and learning about new wines, I would highly suggest joining the Palate Club.

If you are interested in trying Palate Club, you can save 25% off when you purchase the tasting kit with code TASTE25 from their website.