雙語達人:紅酒盲品,比拼淵博知識

Blind tasting is a very odd activity. Contrary to what many imagine, it has nothing to do with blindfolds. It involves tasting a wine without seeing the label and it can deliver shocking surprises. I tasted seven non-vintage champagnes blind with a group of professionals recently. There was horror when they discovered the wine most of them preferred carried a label they regarded as their least favourite. That sort of result is especially common with champagne, arguably the most image-driven – rather than quality-driven – wine of all. But it happens all the time when wine is tasted blind.

盲品(blind tasting)並不是大多數人想象中的蒙着眼睛品酒，而是通過純品嚐而非看酒標來對葡萄酒進行評價。這是一種奇特的活動，因爲它常常爲參與者帶來無比的震撼。最近，我與一組專業人士對七款無年份香檳(non-vintage Champagne)進行了盲品，而最終的結果令這些人士如坐鍼氈，因爲他們發現在盲品中很多中意的酒款，居然是自己在平日飲用時最看不上的那些。由於賣相常常比質量更具影響力，這樣的結果在香檳的盲品中尤其正常，不過在幾乎所有葡萄酒的盲品中，這種事情也時常發生。

Because I’m interested in how wines really taste as opposed to how I think they should, I taste wine blind as often as I can, especially when assessing similar young wines. But blind tasting when you know absolutely nothing about the wine in front of you is something completely different. The notoriously difficult Master of Wine exams include three sessions during which you have a dozen glasses in front of you and nothing more helpful than a printed exam paper asking you to identify each wine as closely as possible, and assess its quality.

爲什麼盲品結果與正常品嚐結果常常相悖呢？出於對此事的好奇，我平常也儘可能多地進行盲品，尤其在評價風格相似的年輕葡萄酒時。不過，對一款未提供任何信息的葡萄酒進行品嚐是一件非同尋常的事情：令人“聞風喪膽”的葡萄酒大師(Master of Wine)考試就包含有三場盲品環節，應試者需要在答題紙上寫出與樣品酒實際情況儘可能相近的信息以及質量評價，而他們僅有的工具只是自己面前的十二隻酒杯而已。

Now that the MW is behind me, I taste wine completely blind only very rarely, and never in public. (When I started out in wine everyone expected me to get it wrong and noticed only when I got it right – today the reverse is true.) So my blind tastings these days are round the dinner table with good friends – and once a year when I act as a judge, with Hugh Johnson, in the Oxford v Cambridge wine-tasting competition.

考慮到頭上頂着葡萄酒大師的光環，我極少做完全的盲品，而且從來不在公開場合進行（剛入行時，我出不出錯別人都無所謂；現在恰恰相反，有不少人等着我出錯呢——我可不能給別人這個機會），因此最近我的幾場盲品都是在餐桌前與好朋友一起進行的。除此之外，我還會與休•約翰遜(Hugh Johnson)在一年一度的牛津—劍橋葡萄酒盲品賽(Oxford v Cambridge wine-tasting competition)中擔任評委。

This is the most extraordinary varsity match, always held well before the Boat Race but taken just as seriously nowadays. This year’s taste-off took place at the end of last month, as usual in the Oxford and Cambridge Club on Pall Mall in London. The teams of six plus a reserve had been training since the beginning of the academic year. The Cambridge coach, a past competitor who has served in the US army in Iraq and signs himself “Major Dave”, put them through five blind tastings a week in the month leading up to the match.

牛津—劍橋葡萄酒盲品賽是最特別的大學比賽，常常在賽艇(Boat Race)之前舉辦，其隆重程度也絲毫不遜於賽艇。今年的比賽場地仍舊是位於倫敦(London)蓓爾美爾街(Pall Mall)的牛津劍橋俱樂部(the Oxford and Cambridge Club)。爲了在比賽中獲得勝利，每支隊伍的六名選手外加一名預備選手自學年伊始就開始接受訓練。劍橋大學(Cambridge)隊的教練是該項賽事的往屆選手，由於曾在駐伊拉克(Iraq)美軍服役而自稱戴夫少校(Major Dave)，此君在比賽當月開始就爲隊員們安排每週五次的盲品，可謂不打無準備之仗。

The Oxford coach, historian Hanneke Wilson, inflicts a similar routine, including a 12-bottle tasting under match conditions every Saturday afternoon. Captain of her team was Brunei-born biophysicist Ren Lim, whom I had met at last year’s competition where he was crowned top taster. Another alumnus of the Oxford team, Alex Hunt, now a Master of Wine and professional wine buyer, told me how he’d been drafted in to organise some practice tasting this year and Ren had nailed a 2011 Pinot Grigio from Collio precisely. Such precision, I should report, is rare.

身爲牛津大學(Oxford)隊教練的歷史學家哈內克•威爾森(Hanneke Wilson)也毫不怠慢，每週六下午，她都爲隊員們組織十二款酒盲品的實戰演練。其麾下的前任隊長苒琳(Ren Lim) 是一位出生於文萊(Brunei)的生物物理學家，曾在去年摘得最佳品嚐員桂冠。牛津大學的葡萄酒大師兼專業葡萄酒買手阿萊克斯•亨特(Alex Hunt)給我講述了自己今年被召喚入隊來組織盲品練習的經歷，同時還告訴我苒琳曾在備賽練習中準確地判斷出來自科里奧(Collio)的2011年份灰比諾(Pinot Grigio)葡萄酒。我必須承認，能有如此的準確度，實屬罕見和難得。

When I attended my first Oxbridge wine-tasting match in the 1970s, two brothers from Hong Kong were competing and this was thought hugely novel. In this year’s teams, six out of the 14 had Asian surnames and the Cambridge team included an American, a Pole and a Lithuanian doing a PhD in “automatic emotion prediction in music”. I do hope none of them is neglecting their studies for wine. The top Cambridge taster, Stefan Kuppen, was a Dutch ex-investment banker and the top Oxford taster with exactly the same score (140 points out of a possible 240) was a first-timer, chemistry PhD student Tom Arnold.

記得我第一次參加這項賽事是在上世紀七十年代，那場比賽中，有一對來自香港(Hong Kong)的兄弟頗有實力，在當時看來這種情況很新奇；而在今年的比賽場上，四十位選手中有六位來自亞洲，劍橋大學隊中有一位美國選手、一位波蘭選手和一位正在攻讀博士學位的立陶宛選手——我真心希望他們不要停止對葡萄酒的學習。劍橋大學的最佳品嚐員斯蒂芬•庫彭(Stefan Duppen)是一位荷蘭投資銀行家，而與其獲得同樣分數的（240分中獲得140分）牛津大學最佳品嚐員是一位新手——目前正在攻讀化學專業博士學位的湯姆•阿諾德(Tom Arnold)。

In the end Oxford won by a dribble, 689 to 677 marks. Cambridge captain, Ellie Kim, a second-time competitor who grew up in Korea and Canada, was distraught. “I can’t believe it,” she kept repeating when the results were announced in Berry Bros’ cellars across the road, making me as co-marker feel decidedly guilty. Hugh and I always taste blind ourselves first so that we can judge what incorrect guesses we feel are admissible. And then, on the anonymous but numbered papers submitted, we allot up to five marks for the dominant grape variety, up to eight for geographical origin, up to two for vintage and up to five for the, generally almost illegible, written comments on each wine.

比賽的結果公佈於與賽場僅有一路之隔的貝瑞兄弟(Berry Bro)的酒窖，最終牛津隊以689比677的成績戰勝了劍橋隊。劍橋隊的隊長艾麗•金(Ellie Kim)是第二次參加該項賽事，這位在韓國(Korea)和加拿大(Canada)都有過生活經歷的選手在聽到比賽結果後一直在重複着“簡直不敢相信”，這讓作爲打分人之一的我有種負罪感。休•約翰遜和我總會在比賽開始之前對樣品酒進行盲品，如此一來我們可以判定選手們的答卷在哪些方面的錯誤可以接受。在判卷時，我們在主要葡萄品種項目上最高給到五分，在產區項目上最高給到八分，在年份項目上最高給到兩分，而在通常情況下比較難以辨認字跡的葡萄酒評價項目上最高給到五分。

Usually the wines are fairly run-of-the-mill but, this year, Pol Roger champagne, which has sponsored the event since 1992, decided to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the competition by persuading some of the world’s top wine producers to donate some of their finest bottles. So it was that we were treated to the likes of Le Montrachet and first growth Château Haut-Brion, not to mention a 1953 to celebrate the anniversary (see below).

通常情況下，大賽選用的葡萄酒都處於適合日常飲用的級別。不過今年情況有所不同，作爲賽事贊助商（自1992年起）的保爵祿(Pol Roger)香檳爲了慶祝該項賽事的第六十週年，極力說服一些世界頂級莊園來贊助一些自己最好的酒款，這讓比賽選手們品嚐到了很多頂級佳釀，比如蒙哈榭(Le Montrachet)以及紅顏容莊園(Château Haut-Brion)1953年份——能喝到這款酒真讓人難以置信（酒單見文章末尾列表）。

I was reminded of how, when asked to give tips to MW students on the tasting papers, I assured them that they would never be served a first growth, since the institute couldn’t afford one. The next year the red wines set before the candidates included three vintages of Château Lafite. (This was long before Chinese-led inflation of that particular first-growth’s prices.)

記得有一年爲葡萄酒大師學員進行品酒考試指導時，我非常肯定地說他們絕對不會在考試中品嚐到一級莊園(first growth)的葡萄酒，因爲學院無法負擔這麼高的費用——結果第二年的考試中，紅葡萄酒樣品里居然有三款不同年份的拉菲莊園(Château Lafite)！而在這之後不久，中國市場就炒起了葡萄酒（尤其是一級莊園）的價格泡沫。

None of the tasters this year seemed to realise that the wines were quite so smart, but that’s not surprising since blind tasting is the least flattering way to show off a wine. And many of the student competitors had very probably never tasted a first growth, much less a wine from the 1950s.

估計今年的參賽選手中沒有一個會意識到此次選酒的特殊性，不過這也並不奇怪，因爲在盲品中贊助樣品是一種最不顯擺的展示方式。我估計參賽學生們中的很多人很有可能從來沒有喝過一級莊園，更別提上個世紀五十年代的紅顏容莊園了。

The same could not be said for two other teams – wine writers v wine trade – who, exceptionally to celebrate the anniversary, were given exactly the same wines to identify in a separate room, their papers marked by senior Masters of Wine Anthony Hanson and Sebastian Payne. The atmosphere in their room was so competitively tense that at one point Pol Roger’s selector of the blind wines refused to enter.

比賽當天還有另外兩支隊伍，分別是葡萄酒作家隊和葡萄酒行業隊。由於慶祝六十週年的關係，這兩個隊在另外一個房間也盲品了比賽用酒，答卷由資深葡萄酒大師安東尼•漢森(Anthony Hanson)和塞巴斯蒂安•佩恩(Sebastian Payne)評判。這兩支隊伍之間的比賽氣氛非常緊張，以至於選擇保爵祿香檳酒的人一度拒絕進入場地。

In the event, the scores of wine writers Oz Clarke, Matthew Jukes, Will Lyons, Peter Richards MW, Anthony Rose, Michael Schuster and Joe Wadsack were even closer to those of the trade team of five Masters of Wine and two Master Sommeliers. The trade won by just six points. But the top individual taster was, much to his surprise, Anthony Rose of The Independent with 176 marks. “I must say, I have new respect for you hacks,” judge Sebastian Payne MW grudgingly admitted. “You’re actually quite good at your job.”

在這場活動中，擁有五位葡萄酒大師和兩位大師級侍酒師 (Master Sommelier)的葡萄酒行業隊僅以六分的優勢獲勝，而且作家隊選手奧茲•克拉克(Oz Clarke)、馬修•胡克斯(Matthew Jukes)、威爾•里昂斯(Will Lyons)、彼得•理查茲(Peter Richards)（葡萄酒大師）、安東尼•羅斯(Anthony Rose)、麥克爾•舒斯特(Michael Schuster)和喬•瓦德薩克(Joe Wadsack)的分數與行業隊的分數很接近。最佳品嚐員的獲得者令人意外地由獨立報(The Independent)的安東尼•羅斯獲得，得分爲176。這樣的結果讓作爲評委的葡萄酒大師塞巴斯蒂安•佩恩無奈地說：“我得承認，自己現在已經對你們這些文人墨客刮目相看了，你們的水平之高讓我大爲意外。”