It started as a mix-up of two glasses of white wine. The occasion was a tasting of the wine portfolio of the distributor Clicquot Inc., presented earlier this month at the Toy Building. In one hand I held a glass of William Fevre’s Chablis 2003, in the other a glass of Bouchard’s Chevalier Montrachet 1999. Both were 100% Chardonnay, both from Burgundy, though given their difference of soil and climate – what the French call terroir – the two wines could be expected to have quite different flavor profiles. Inadvertently, I’d lost track of which wine was in which hand.

Okay, I said to myself, if I can’t distinguish in a mini-blind tasting between two starkly different expressions of Chardonnay, then perhaps it’s for me to hang up my tasting shoes. And so I tipped the first glass to my nose. Up came a minerally, edgy scent that summoned up a long-ago memory of my first attempt, in blue Cub Scout uniform, to create a spark by rubbing together two pieces of slate. The result had been a whiff of smoke and a hint of the same gun powdery smell that now is sued from the first glass. It was the classic smell of Chablis. From the other glass came a much deeper, richer smell that was oaky, vanillan, buttery verging on butterscotch. It defined a ripe, top-class white Burgundy such as Chevalier-Montrachet. I might have confused my glasses, but there was no way to confuse those wines.

Putting aside those two glasses, I sat down to a seminar called “Wine Ratings: Myth or Reality,” hosted by Charles Curtis, who has a master’s in wine, and is Clicquot’s director of wine education. Three glasses each of Chardonnay, Shiraz, and Cabernet Sauvignon, unmarked except by number, were al ready in place in front of each attendee. Using a 100-point scale devised by Mr. Curtis, we were instructed to give rate each wine’s appearance, aroma, structure, quality, and maturity then attempt to identify it. The first Chardonnay was full of vivid citrusy fruit flavors. It struck me as being the sort of up-front wine that Australians do so well, like Rosemount’s “Show Reserve” Chardonnay, a wine produced in high volume selling for about $20. But the wine turned out instead to be Peter Michael’s “Cuvee Indigene” 2001, a tiny-production cult wine from Napa valley that sells for around $120. My stab at identifying it had been off by a mere 8,000 miles and $100. As we tasted the other eight wines, there was more befuddlement among all the tasters over origin, score, and price of the wines.

Mr. Curtis’s exercise, as it turned out, was not to meant to show us up as bad tasters. “My premise,” he said, “is that wine ratings based on blind tastings are completely invalid.” What is one to make of the fact, for example, that one wine inserted into the tasting by Mr. Curtis received a rating of 96 from Robert Parker’s the Wine Advocate, while Wine Spectator gave it a score of 69? That wine, Chateau Montelena’s Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon 2001, is either a triumph or failure, depending on your pick of wine raters. To make sure that those disparate ratings had not been based on extreme bottle variation, Mr. Curtis ordered a case of the Montelena wine and opened one bottle after the other. “I concluded that this wine was neither a 69 or 96 pointer,” he says.

The problem with wine ratings, in Mr. Curtis’s view, is that they too often blur the all-important line between a wine’s quality and its style. “Quality is an abstraction separate from style,” he explains. “As a professional taster, I have to get past style and taste for quality.” I’d take that one step further and suggest that, since style can be in your face, while quality is a subtler issue, style usually wins. One wine, for example, might blast you with fat, slightly sweet flavors that make a strong impression. But that’s all you get. Another wine might at first be shy in the glass, yet with repeated sipping, reveal a range of flavors that last long in the mouth and memory. Such wines, which are often European rather than New World, require you to meet them half way. And, unlike wines engineered for instant gratification, they may require years of aging before they’re ready for their close-up. One style of wine works for the family cookout and plastic cups, the other for the crown roast of lamb and balloon crystal.

Passing judgment on a wine can be confusing enough even when the label is in plain sight. Is there any point, then, to blind tasting, even for experts? “Lots of people do think that trying to identify a wine tasted blind is just jumping through hoops,” responded Linda Lawry, director of the International Wine Center, “but it’s an extremely important exercise because you come to it with no preconceived opinions. You’re all alone with that wine, so you really have to focus on what it smells and tastes like.” In the blind tasting of six wines required for the advanced diploma from the IWC, noted Ms. Lawry, “you can completely misread a wine and yet if your tasting notes build a good argument for what you thought it was, you can still pass the exam.” Asked if she had ever totally “blown” a blind tasting, Ms. Lawry answered, “All the time.” And she invoked the response of the legendary British wine-taster Harry Waugh upon being asked if he’d ever mistaken a Bordeaux for a Burgundy: “Not since lunch,” he replied.

When a gifted taster does manage to sift through all the variables to identify a wine, it can be a memorable moment. One evening at dinner’s end, quite a few years ago, I brought to the table a bottle wrapped in brown paper and poured a sample for Harriet Lembeck, a wine educator known for her taste memory. All that was obvious was that the wine was white and sweet. “It might be a German Riesling,” said Bill Lembeck, Harriet’s husband.

“Don’t go there,” said Ms. Lembeck. She sipped and thought. “It’s kind of like a Sauternes,” she said, “but it doesn’t have the power of Sauternes. Yet I know I’m barking around the right corner of the world.” Step by step, Ms. Lembeck moved her taste buds along the Bordeaux wine map, crossing from the left bank of the Garonne River, where Sauternes lies, to the right bank, home to the obscure commune of Sainte-Croix-du-Mont. Though rarely seen, its sweet wines are made from the same grapes as Sauternes. What’s missing, as Ms. Lembeck noted of the wine in hand, is the power. By naming that wine, she’d done more than perform a virtuoso tasting trick. She’d confirmed that even a modest wine, true to its origins, can be tracked back to its home soil. All it takes is knowledge, a methodical approach, and a killer palate.

RECOMMENDED WINES

This month’s Clicquot Inc. portfolio tasting was its last. The firm has been subsumed into Moet Hennessy USA, a unit of LVMH, which will now distribute Clicquot’s stellar wines, including the following:

VOLNAY CAILLERETS “ANCIENNE CUVEE CARNOT” 2002, BOUCHARD ($38.95) The violet-inflected aroma of this wine manages to be both forceful yet beguiling. Gentle and silky textured in the mouth, melding pluminess with a touch of coffee and chocolate. Will get richer with a few years in bottle, but it’s hard to postpone the pleasure already offered. At Sherry-Lehmann, 679 Madison Ave., 212-838-7500.

TOCAI FRIULANO 2003, LIVIO FELLUGA ($32) Fresh and bracing, with the signature bitter almond and apricot flavors of this grape from Italy’s Northeast corner. All fruit, no oak. Will cut right through fried oysters. Vino, 121 E. 27th Street 212-725-6516.

MUSCAT BEAUMES-DE-VENISE, DOMAINE DE COYEAUX 2002 (13.95 FOR A HALF-BOTTLE) Exceptionally pretty, ripest white peach aroma and taste to this lightly fortified white wine, made by stopping the fermentation of extremely ripe Muscat grapes with spirits. Lighter, fresher, and purer than typical wines from this region near Avignon. A good sipper when Port seems too potent. At Sherry-Lehmann.