The Varsity Blind Wine Tasting Match is an annual competition in blind wine tasting between the blind tasting teams of the Oxford University Blind Wine Tasting Society and the Cambridge University Blind Wine Tasting Society which has run since 1953. It is sponsored by Champagne house Pol Roger and the current convenor is James Simpson, Master of Wine (MW).
The winning team wins a trip to Épernay, France, to visit the vineyards of Pol Roger and compete in an international tasting match against a French university, plus a bottle of vintage Pol Roger each. The taster with the highest individual score wins a magnum of Pol Roger's top cuvee, Sir Winston Churchill. The reserve taster with the higher score wins a subscription to Decanter Magazine. The losing team each wins a bottle of Non Vintage Pol Roger.
Read more about Varsity Blind Wine Tasting Match: Judges
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“For as the body grows old, so the wits grow old and become blind towards all things alike.”
—Herodotus (c. 484–424 B.C.)
“I sat at a table where were rich food and wine in abundance, and obsequious attendance, but sincerity and truth were not; and I went away hungry from the inhospitable board. The hospitality was as cold as the ices. I thought that there was no need of ice to freeze them.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The great networks are there to prove that ideas can be canned like spaghetti. If everything ends up by tasting like everything else, is that not the evidence that it has been properly cooked?”
—Frederic Raphael (b. 1931)
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—Stephanie Martson (20th century)