What is Avino Taste Master?

A game played every week by people who enjoy wine and want to improve their wine tasting skills whilst at the same time having a bit of fun :)

Every Tuesday we'll send you 3 wines to taste blind. The idea is to figure out what they are:

  • The structure of the wine - sweetness, body, acidity etc
  • What grape the wine is made from
  • Which country the wine came from
  • What region it was produced in

Sounds easy? Far from it. Expert tasters routinely get it wrong and if you got a score of more than 3000 out of the maximum possible 4200 points per game you're doing really well.

The Avino Taste Master App

Every Tuesday, a new tasting is added to the tastings setion and the Avino Taste Master App will display the wines in a hidden format. You then use it to record your analysis and guesses about what the wines are. We give you a clue most weeks, except for the weeks when we play the round we call "Nightmare" which is made up from totally random wines.

The Taste-Along videos

If you want to see where you went wrong [of course, you never will! ;)] or you want to improve your tasting skills either just for fun and learning or because you are studying for a Guildsom or WSET course, you can taste the wines blind and then watch our weekly taste-along videos.

We produce a new video each Monday, uploaded to Youtube. This includes an introduction to the next tasting in which we give some clues to you if it is particularly hard and a "reveal" video where, once you have tasted the wines, you can see what they were. Pick up some tips about tasting, learn more about the process of analysing wine and listen to DipWSET presenters talk about what they thought of each wine.

Perfect for WSET or Guildsom students

What could be better for people taking the WSET or Guildsom exams? Blind wines chosen in a sensible fashion and a tutored taste-along video with an expert for each flight to teach you more about wine tasting and wine appreciation.

Frequently Asked Questions

How is it structured? - Each tasting is 1 round of a game that is made up out of 7 rounds in total - so a full game lasts for 7 weeks.

How do I get the wines? - By post. We mail them out on a Tuesday in special neutral, nitrogen filled borosilicate tubes.

How do I score points? - Each aspect of the wine that you you guess/analyse is compareed to a judges assessment of the same wine. If you guess/analyse the same as the judge you get points that are displayed in the app.

What is the structure of the scoring? - Structure gets you 80 marks, getting the grape guess correctly is 60 points, the country gets you 40 points and the region a further 20 points.

Who are the judges? - The wines are sometime marked by friendly MW judges but generally by the staff at Avino who are WSET Level 4 qualified and who competitively blind taste over 1500 wines per year.

Do the judges ever make mistakes? - Yes, occasionally but we're very experienced and it's not very often.

Is the judges decision final? - Yes (sorry!)

What are the maximum scores? - 200 points per wine, 600 points per round, 4200 points per game. Anything over 3000 and you're doing really well.

What are the prizes? - Every game (ie 7 rounds) has 2 prizes available. The best overall individual taster gets a bottle of champagne and the best team gets a voucher for £200 to use at their local restaurant to celebrate their win. Of course, getting the title "Top Taster" also carries with it ultimate bragging rights amongst your friends.

What happens if I like the wine, can I buy full bottles? - Generally, all of the wines we taste are available from Avino.ai but we're here primarily to test and improve your tasting skills and have some fun rather than sell you wine.

What about the environment? Can I recycle? - Yes, please do. The glass tubes are readily recycled by most councils but even better, once you get a pile of used tubes drop them back to us and we will sterilise them and re-use them.

What happens if I don't like it and want to cancel? - Well, that's a shame but let us know and we'll cancel your membership immediately. Funds are taken on the 1st of every month (so we can plan for and buy the right quantity of wines) and are non-refundable so if you do want to leave us please do it before the payment is taken.