Ability to distinguish whisky from cognac

On a train today from Ottawa to Toronto and using the opportunity to clean out the virtual “Inbasket” on my hard drive. Lots of junk but also lots of fun things I’ve run across while on the Web and set aside meaning to read later. Here’s one delight: A scientific paper by some researchers at Hamilton’s McMaster University in which they tried to determine if the human taste bud can, in fact, tell the difference between a decent single malt Scotch whisky and decent Cognac.

The researchers did some blind taste tests on four individuals, asking them if they could tell the brandies Courvoisierand Remy Martin from the whiskies Glenfiddich and Springbank.

You may be surprised to learn that just one of the four individuals was able to tell the differences nearly all the time.

For more here’s an extract from the journal article (I’m afraid I don’t have the original URL)

BMJ 1994;309:1686-1688 (24 December)

Science

Ability to distinguish whisky (uisge beatha) from brandy (cognac)

E J Moran Campbell, ,^a Diana M E Campbell, Department of Clinical Epidemiology and Biostatistics, McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada,,^a Robin S Roberts, professor ^a

^a 208 Governor's Road, Dundas, Ontario L9H 3K1, Canada

Correspondence to: Dr E J M Campbell.

Abstract

Objective: To assess ability to distinguish between first ratemalt whisky and brandy and between different brands of each.
Design: Crossover with two sessions of 12 blindfold tastingsof two whiskies and two brandies before and after supper, repeatednot more than seven days later.
Setting: Dundas, Ontario. Participants–4 volunteers aged 50-68years, all moderate drinkers of alcohol and members of a wineclub.
Main outcome measures: Proportion of samples correctly identified(whisky v brandy) and, of those, the proportion of brands correctlyidentified.
Results: Only one participant produced irrefutable statisticalevidence (P<0.0001) of being able to distinguish betweenwhisky and brandy, correctly identifying 50/51 (98%) samples.Two participants achieved some success in identification (72%,P=0.0031 and 65% P=0.031). The fourth participant's responsesreflected pure guesswork. Brandy was no easier to identify thanwhisky (P=0.84). The participant who was best able to distinguishbetween whisky and brandy was also best able to identify correctlythe brand of whisky (100%, P<0.0001).
Conclusion: Despite the fact that not all participants completedthe full number of tastings the results show that some participantscould distinguish neither between malt whisky and brandy norbetween different brands of whisky and brandy. However, thesuccess of one participant shows that “it can be done” and thathis whisky specific ability is acquired not innate.