[okabat]

I walked away from Somm convinced that wine tasting is a load of crap. The organization that puts on the "Master Sommelier" exam doesn't share results or a scoring rubric, which is a huge red flag that the test isn't merit based. It screams of manufactured exclusivity.

The best trained wine tasters can use deductive reasoning to narrow down the wine's identity, but a significant portion seems to be visual. Arguably, they are only effective at this because wine taxonomy is defined by visual characteristics. In a double blind taste test, I highly doubt it's possible to precisely identify the wine.