Yesterday, I had the opportunity to co-host the interactive session here at the EADP conference in Barcelona. Participants (about 90 people grouped in 16 teams) were asked to do a blind wine tasting exercise and submit comments & ratings about eight Spanish wines. The comments were appearing in real-time on a giant screen in the room. At the end, the various teams had to vote for their top 3 wines and try to guess their price. At the same time, we had a wine expert from our industry, Trevor Fenwick, who was tasting the wines and coming up with his own comments and ratings. At the end, we compared the expert’s view vs. the opinion of the group to prove the concept of the wisdom of crowds.

It was a great session, combining Web 2.0 and wine tasting! I called it Crowdtasting… 🙂 We had a whole range of wine tasting comments going from very serious and relevant comments, to single words (still relevant) to silly messages and even spam(!?!). This clearly showed that moderation might be needed in user reviews. And did the concept of wisdom of crowds pass the test? Yes, the group and the expert agreed on 2 out of top 3 wines. I had a great time and a glass of the best-rated wine at the end. If you’re curious, that wine was Scala Dei Cartoixa reserva tinto – Priorat – 2003.