I have a wine that, in its rating, states "non-blind horizontal." I have seen statements like this before, "non-blind," "horizontal," and "vertical." What exactly does this mean?

I like it when tasters give full disclosure of their methods! A blind tasting is when the producer of the wine is not knowna€”think of the bottle wrapped in a paper bag (at Wine Spectator, our blind tastings mean we also don´t know what the price is). So a non-blind tasting means they knew exactly what bottle was in front of them.

A vertical tasting is when you taste single bottling, or a single winery´s wines, over the course of several vintages. For example, you could compare the 2005 vintage of the Caymus Special Selection with the 2004, 2003 and 2002, looking at both the thread that runs through the wines and the vintage distinctions. It´s difficult to do vertical tastings blind since the purpose is to look at the track record of a particular wine.

A horizontal tasting is when you put together a flight of wines that all come from the same vintage, usually in a certain category. They can be, say, 2005 white Burgundies or 2004 Napa Cabernets. This helps you evaluate wines among their peers, and also helps to assess a vintage. You can do these either blind or non-blind.

So, a "non-blind horizontal" means that a group of wines from a single vintage (and most likely a single region and/or grape variety) were tasted together, but the wines were unbagged and the participants knew who the producers were.