When Wine Is a Marathon, Not a Sprint

Tom Gilbey is a genius wine merchant, but now he is also a certified viral sensation! While running the London Marathon this week, Gilbey stopped to blind tasting a new wine at each mile. The bit was filmed, uploaded to his TikTok account where he now has 117k followers, and the video currently has 4.4million views at time of publishing. In addition to getting all the new eyes, Gilbey was able to raise more than £13,000 for The Sobell House Hospice Charity.

During the 26.2 mile marathon, Gilbey tasted 25 wines without knowing what they were. He got 7 fully correct, 4 wrong, and 14 he got "mostly right" (his words!) For those of you familiar with blind tasting, it's a skill set sommeliers and wine professionals hone over time, using muscle memory from tasting wines during their career and are able to run through a process of elimination to ultimately guess grape variety, origin, vintage, and even producer. It's a special skill, sometimes referred to as a parlor trick.