THE notion that you would enjoy drinking wine reminiscent of “petroleum” is not for everyone. Nor do the same words mean the same things to different people. One man’s “fruity” is another man’s “wet bin”. Little wonder then that wine enthusiasts are often dismissed as pompous bluffers. But what if that were the point? Your correspondent recently went to a wine tasting at the Solicitors’ Wine Society in London. But this was no ordinary tasting. Modelled on “Call My Bluff”, a long-running British game show, the event replaced the usual panel of earnest enthusiasts with a trio of liars. For each fresh pour—there were a dozen different wines—the three members of the panel came to dramatically different conclusions. Only one was telling the truth. The rest of us had not an inkling what we were drinking. Was the tenth glass a 2009 Bordeaux? A Côtes du Rhône? A South African cabernet merlot? That was for us to guess. The three members of the panel looked respectable enough. Middle-aged lawyers all, they were charming too and immensely dismissive of each other; traits that made each one seem believable. The trickiest thing, especially for rank amateurs such as your correspondent, is that their disparate descriptions were quite convincing. In the end, the highest score for the evening was seven out of 12, achieved by only one participant. A handful of people guessed six wines correctly. This blogger managed five. My friend and host, a retired solicitor with an impressive cellar, chalked up a meagre four. What accounted for the surprising results? Are all oenophiles full of hot air?

The answer depends on what we talk about when we talk about wine. Initially, I listened to the panel’s descriptions and compared that with my own hastily-written tasting notes. One wine was “fruity”, yes, but it was also “meadowy” and could even be “acerbic”. But there is no absolute zero from which to measure the meadowiness of something. Abstractions are not falsifiable. That, I suspect, is why my host, with decades of experience drinking wine, scored less than I did.

How else do you guess when somebody is bluffing about wine? Another way is to look for patterns—the statistical method. If panellist 3 was telling the truth in the first two rounds, then surely it was unlikely to be him again? But second-guessing manufactured randomness is like playing rock-paper-scissors. It is possible but only with a very large data set of past behaviour.

That leaves only one way to tell when somebody is lying about wine. If you cannot read the wine and you cannot read the pattern, then it may be best to read the man. Panellist 2, for instance, referred to his notes and swirled his wine a bit too much when bluffing, but looked straight at the crowd when was telling the truth. Another panellist sounded confident throughout but had a more pronounced sneer when faking it. Confidence, then, is key. And a “tell”, as they say in poker, can be exploited.

Will this work in real life? It is hard to say. The wine tasting was a controlled environment that offered a way to compare one story to another. It is also bears repeating that the panellists were all lawyers—take from that what you will. But as in so many other situations, for people to believe the story you’re selling, it is best if you believe it yourself. Or at least sound like you do.