[HN Gopher] Is wine fake?
___________________________________________________________________
Is wine fake?
Author : ctoth
Score : 178 points
Date : 2022-11-21 21:20 UTC (1 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (asteriskmag.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (asteriskmag.com)
| anononaut wrote:
| I've heard similarly for years, especially from a sommelier. What
| I've always wondered is if the same holds true for fine teas,
| whiskeys, and coffees.
| wolframhempel wrote:
| More expensive wine doesn't necessarily taste "better" - as
| better is a highly subjective experience, specific to the
| individuals preferences. But it does tend to taste more
| "complex", e.g. like more different things at once, and more
| elegant, e.g. containing rarer flavour notes like oak or
| earthyness in reds or clearer mineralic taste in whites.
|
| Also, in wine, the price to value ratio is anything but linear.
| In most European countries, once you've made it past the 8 euro
| mark, you can get some great wines that get a lot better up to
| about 30 euro a bottle. After that,paying an additional 100 only
| gets you a marginally better wine, if at all.
|
| Overall though, the best advice is to drink whatever you enjoy.
| caseyross wrote:
| Yep, and it can be argued that this kind of complexity spectrum
| is the foundation of connoisseurship itself, in any domain. The
| journey from amateur to expert is one of becoming bored with
| simple, easy-to-understand things, and gradually seeking out
| more complicated things to satisfy one's curiousity.
| jsbg wrote:
| if you like wine at all, then there is absolutely a correlation
| between enjoyment and price; that the correlation isn't 1.0
| doesn't mean that wine is fake
| EugeneOZ wrote:
| "Your classiest friend invites you to dinner. They take out a
| bottle of Chardonnay that costs more than your last..."
|
| Why you need this water?
| [deleted]
| etempleton wrote:
| Wine is just fermented grapes. It is not magic. Expensive bottles
| of wine may be better on average, but largely just because they
| put in even more quality controls and so deliver a more
| consistent wine. It is not magnitudes of a difference.
|
| People talk about wine like it is magic or high art. That there
| is something deeper to understand. There really isn't.
| rfrey wrote:
| But grapes are not all the same: besides the taste of grapes
| varying depending on the soil, climate, orientation to the sun
| etc., there is also the judgement of when to harvest. Once in
| harvest season grapes can approach and then pass the desirable
| sugar level in a matter of days.
|
| During the winemaking process there are many variables that
| cannot be codified from season to season because of variation
| in the grapes, such as increasing or decreasing acidity (and
| how), fermentation temperature, adjusting tannins, and probably
| more.
| pbreit wrote:
| I have a theory on the Pepsi challenge: Pepsi is sweeter and so
| it performs better in a single taste test but is gross when drunk
| frequently.
| fegu wrote:
| I thought this was a well established fact.
| drbeast wrote:
| Yes, wine is fake just like the moon landing, vaccine efficacy,
| and the election /s
|
| Sorry I couldn't help myself!
| bergenty wrote:
| The entire field is absolute hogwash. Blind testers can't tell
| the difference. I was mad the other day because I saw wine
| glasses categorized by what kind of wine should go in them-- give
| me a break.
| rfrey wrote:
| I made a career limiting move at my first job when I arranged a
| blind wine tasting at the house of the CEO, who was a pretentious
| wine snob. I'd have been fine if I stuck to $40-50 bottles but I
| snuck in some Gato Negro from Chile, then made sure everyone knew
| when that was the CEO's favourite.
|
| Started my first company shortly thereafter, probably that
| incident is as responsible as anything else for my
| entrepreneurial path.
| stephc_int13 wrote:
| Nope, wine is not fake.
|
| Some are better than others, depending on many factors, and this
| is not up for debate.
|
| Of course, there is also a lot of bullshit at the higher end of
| the price spectrum.
| lkrubner wrote:
| I worked at WineSpectator.com in 2012-2013. I'll say this in
| their favor: the wine tastings were blind. A bunch of interns
| would set up the wine tasting, pouring the wine into glasses and
| then hiding the bottles. Only after everything was setup were the
| editors allowed into the room. So when the editors drank the
| wine, they had no idea if they were drinking a $9 bottle or a
| $900 bottle. They had to focus on the taste and balance, and
| write their report. Only afterwards were they told which wine
| they had tasted.
|
| Having said that, I'll also mention, the way the editors
| struggled for new adjectives did sometimes make me laugh:
|
| "a vast, hearty body, notes of blue and a hint of graphite steel"
|
| "a radiance similar to the sun at dawn, a strong body, notes of
| orange"
| hbrn wrote:
| Maybe some of them were synesthetes?
| alvarezbjm-hn wrote:
| In that event, do you know if the 900$ bottles were qualified
| as more enjoyable than the 9$ bottles?
|
| For instance, in Costa Rica, one year, many wine drinkers
| prised this wine as exceptionally good, specially consideringn
| it was very very inexpensive and not even packaged in a glass
| bottle.
|
| https://vino.cr/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/CLOS-DE-PIRQUE-CA...
|
| I can't remember the exact number, but it cost between $5 and
| $10. That was over 10 years ago
| Havoc wrote:
| >notes of blue
|
| I'm so stealing that
| [deleted]
| ineptech wrote:
| It's a running joke in my circle to describe the taste of any
| expensive wine, beer or coffee as, "strident, yet
| insouciant."
| metadat wrote:
| Word of the day: Insouciant
|
| _French adjective_
|
| Translated definitions: _Carefree, careless, reckless_
| NoboruWataya wrote:
| I have gotten fairly into coffee but I struggle to
| independently pick up these subtle notes. I'll take a sip,
| struggle to put any concrete words on the taste, and then read
| the tasting notes and (honestly) think "ah of course, yes I
| definitely get that". But I'm sure it's all just the power of
| suggestion.
|
| (An exception is some Ethiopian beans which have an
| unmistakable blueberry aroma and taste that they are famous
| for.)
|
| I've stopped worrying too much about "advancing" past that
| level. Now I just buy the coffee, read the notes, enjoy
| experiencing the sensations that have been placed in my head.
| Is it "connoisseurship"? Is it a placebo? Who cares, it's fun!
| WaxProlix wrote:
| It might be useful to you - it definitely was for me - to get
| a few french presses of strikingly different coffees that are
| 'emblematic' of certain flavor profiles. This was a long time
| ago, so I just used Starbucks blends (sorry current me) but
| you could certainly do something even more telling nowadays.
| So you'd get a yergachiffe that was definitely blueberry, but
| then a slightly different Ethiopian bean that's very lemony,
| and some Arabian style Indonesian beans for Spice characters,
| a Guatemalan or something for nuttiness, etc.
| Stratoscope wrote:
| I roast my own coffee and buy most of my green beans from Sweet
| Maria's.
|
| Maria's husband Tom writes the tasting notes for each variety,
| such as...
|
| _Rwanda Dry Process Macuba_
|
| "Berry notes, floral impression, ripe blackberry, blueberry,
| fruited acidity, darker roasts tie in delicious bittersweet
| undertones, like strawberries dipped in chocolate sauce."
|
| _Yemen Al Qafr Hawari_
|
| "Sweet, somewhat rustic, notes of pistachio cookie, malted
| chocolate, ginger powder, sesame candies, corn syrup, tobacco
| leaf. Super chocolatey dark roasts."
|
| I swear (even though I know I'm wrong) that he just makes this
| stuff up.
| surement wrote:
| > I swear (even though I know I'm wrong) that he just makes
| this stuff up.
|
| I don't know if this in particular is made up or not. But
| tasting notes, especially of the marketing kind, can be a
| collection of notes from different preparation methods,
| consumption temperatures, and, most likely, from being drank
| next to other coffees that taste different and might bring
| out each other's individual accents.
| nkrisc wrote:
| I don't think I could ever tell two different coffee
| varieties apart, but I can definitely tell good coffee from
| bad coffee. Though that's probably mostly about the roast and
| freshness more than anything. So there's probably _something_
| to it but I imagine most of it is unintentional bullshit.
| dahfizz wrote:
| I got gifted a coffee subscription recently, and I was
| actually surprised how different each coffee was.
|
| I think almost anyone could tell the difference between
| different coffees side by side. I just don't think people
| are super focused on the coffee flavor when they drink
| their regular brew.
| jb_s wrote:
| I'm probably pretty accurate differentiating African from
| South American coffees, the flavours are pretty different
| _. I 'm not that great at this sort of stuff either,
| certainly not a food critic. But hey, some people can't
| tell the diff between pepsi and coke.
|
| _ Assumes they're roasted nicely, otherwise it's comparing
| ashtrays with pencil shavings.
| garrickvanburen wrote:
| +1 for Sweet Marias
| EpiMath wrote:
| I've also been roasting coffee from Sweet Maria's for many
| years, and the thing that's useful is that I learned how Tom
| will describe flavors that I like. So, whether he calls it
| "hazelnut" or "almond" doesn't matter, but when he says
| "hazelnut" there is a flavor I enjoy that isn't there when he
| writes "almond"... and some other things like when he writes
| 'crowd pleasing" there is likely to be a lot of balance...
| over time the descriptions have become more and more useful
| to me!
| twelvechairs wrote:
| Good wine experts give descriptions that arent just made up but
| based on a range of real scents - its standard in a sommelier
| school to have an aroma kit of tens to a hundred or so scents
| used as comparisons. Its a few hundred dollars investment for a
| good one.
| bitxbitxbitcoin wrote:
| Those quotes made me laugh and reminded me heavily of weed
| reviews.
|
| Fun tidbit - The difference in aroma, appearance, flavor, and
| experience of a $9 eighth of cannabis versus a $900 eighth of
| cannabis would likely be noticeable even to an amateur.
|
| You don't necessarily need to be a Ganjier[0] to tell.
|
| Efforts to homogenize it and remove labeling do serve to remove
| brand bias which is why it is standard now at cannabis cups -
| but still the quality shines through - literally sometimes.
|
| But when it gets down to reviews and describing experiences we
| are all limited by the English language.
|
| Some quotes from my own reviews:
|
| "The insides almost looked like the outside of a banana slug.
| That kind of yellow."[1]
|
| "Beyond the citrus notes, the smell is definitely honeydew to
| me, not cantaloupe."[2]
|
| [0] https://ganjier.com [1]
| https://thehighestcritic.com/reviews/cultivar-review-pleazur...
| [2] https://thehighestcritic.com/reviews/strain-review-
| melonade-...
| rufus_foreman wrote:
| "a hint of rotting grapes, notes of a bar fight"
| m463 wrote:
| During covid a friend tried a "smell training" kit from amazon
| and I bought one too. (pretty fun, with rose, lemon, eucalyptus
| and clove)
|
| basically, some essential oils of one smell at a time.
|
| Looking at more extensive smell kits, there is a huge jump in
| price if you get a "master wine aroma kit". They can have many
| many scents.
|
| It might just be putting names to smells, but I also wonder if
| you can actually develop or enhance your sense of smell (and
| therefore the aromatic parts of taste)?
| VBprogrammer wrote:
| I've little doubt that when smell was an important part of
| finding and identifying food people would have better trained
| senses. Whether a kit from Amazon can enhance your sense of
| smell, not sure. Certainly not without spending a lot of time
| with it.
| [deleted]
| gspencley wrote:
| There have been a lot of blind wine tastings done and the
| results are always interesting. Sometimes cheap bottles score
| as high, or higher than vintages. Other times people can spot
| the cheap "carton" wine easily.
|
| My wife and I love to cook, have discussed opening our own
| restaurant, have eaten at lots of very expensive "haute
| cuisine" restaurants and have tasted lots of wines.
|
| Part of the "problem" is that taste is subjective and can be
| influenced through suggestion. So the atmosphere, the price,
| the meal pairing can all affect a person's appreciation of the
| glass.
|
| I remember an episode of Penn & Teller's Bullshit where they
| had a "water sommelier" at a restaurant who would upsell
| customers on speciality bottles of water and they were all
| filled with the same tap water from the same garden hose at the
| back of the restaurant. The results were fascinating. Subjects
| swore they tasted different from one another.
|
| The real question, in my opinion, is whether a high-priced
| bottle is "worth it" by as near-objective standards as
| possible. In other words, given two bottles of different
| prices, all else being equal, would the average person prefer
| the taste of one over the other?
|
| That varies widely from one wine to another. My wife and I have
| enjoyed a good vintage but we are also perfectly content with a
| $15 bottle from a local vineyard here in Ontario, which is our
| "go to." I'm equally partial to a $15 Rothschild Merlot or
| Pinot Noir and I wonder if the truly exceptional wines that
| I've tasted at restaurants were more about the environment, the
| food pairing, the company and the occasion than they were about
| the flavour in isolation.
| nonrandomstring wrote:
| > subjective and can be influenced through suggestion. So the
| atmosphere, the price, the meal pairing can all affect...
|
| Music is a massive factor [1]
|
| [1] https://www.businessinsider.com/effects-of-music-on-
| sales-20...
| p1necone wrote:
| The secret is that a lot of cheap wine is pretty darn good. I
| imagine there's somewhat of a correlation between price and
| quality, especially at the absolute bottom end of the pricing
| scale. But it's a very loose correlation.
| Agingcoder wrote:
| Not a lot, but quite a bit. Winemakers have told me that
| they can't sell everything cheaply, and not only for basic
| economic reasons : if it's too cheap, lots of people won't
| buy it!
|
| As to the matter of price, most of my wine tasting friends
| (including some with proper wine collections) are perfectly
| ok paying 5-10 euros for a bottle, as long as they like the
| wine - some of them have even made it a specialty to find
| good and cheap wine.
|
| At the other end, I was once served wine without knowing
| what it was at a friend's place. I took a sip, then
| something happened in my head, and I started crying (I cry
| when food is really good) . I still remember that
| particular bottle, and the, well, infinite landscape that
| had suddenly opened in my mind (I know it sounds utterly
| ridiculous , but this is how it felt). No other wine has
| had the same effect on me, and it turns out the bottle was
| worth about 400 euros!
| hef19898 wrote:
| Yep, there is correlation between my perceived quality and
| price, et the very cheap end of wine. It gets less
| pronounced the more expensive it gets so, and above certain
| threshold it is a lot of branding.
|
| So, I think the biggest problem with all those blind wine
| tastings is that they equate price with quality. Because
| those two are, as goes for everything in life, only ever so
| loosely related.
| ghaff wrote:
| VERY rarely I do a premium wine tasting in California wine
| country. And, yeah, I kinda get it. There are subtle
| differences in some of the high-end wines as opposed to
| midrange stuff. But I'm actually happy with even the better
| box wines (however crappy the low-end stuff is) and I'd
| much rather spend disposable income on a better bottle of
| whisky or a better cheese.
| jcadam wrote:
| Quantity has its own quality :)
|
| ...except Franzia, which sucks.
|
| For those among us who have recently been laid off - Bota
| Box Nighthawk Black is a decent/drinkable red if you're on
| a budget.
| bombcar wrote:
| This is a _huge secret_ across so many different markets;
| it 's insane. The one we may be most familiar with is
| computers, of course - even a bargain-basement computer
| today is an absolute beast compared to 10+ years ago.
| Entire classes of "cheap foods" have disappeared because we
| are so rich we can make everything "good" - meaning the
| bargain-basement stuff is now often higher-quality than
| midrange stuff of 20/50/100 years ago.
|
| Hot dogs are a decent example, they're all now "meat" and
| many are "pure beef" when they used to be the disastrous
| remains of who knows what. And even they are being
| destroyed by just how cheap hamburger is - the original
| fast food was hot dogs and that's almost entirely gone now.
| randomdata wrote:
| _> the original fast food was hot dogs and that 's almost
| entirely gone now._
|
| Curious about this history. According to Wikipedia, fast
| food was common during antiquity, while the hotdog wasn't
| invented until the 1400s. White Castle seems to be
| recognized as the origin of modern day fast food and it
| opened as a hamburger joint.
| bombcar wrote:
| Fair enough, maybe not the originallest, but some of the
| now hamburger chains started out as hot dog chains, of
| which there's one? left IIRC.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl%27s_Jr.#History
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hot_dog
| randomdata wrote:
| Isn't present day Carl's Jr. just Hardee's by another
| name? Hardee's began as a burger joint as well.
|
| According to research from the University of Guelph,
| hotdogs are comparatively uncommon in fast food because
| hotdogs are harder to cook consistently and have a
| shorter window of enjoyability which makes them less
| suited to fast food than hamburgers.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Isn't present day Carl's Jr. just Hardee's by another
| name?
|
| The corporate parent of Carl's Jr. bought Hardee's in
| 1997, but Carl's stayed pretty much the same.
| fiddlerwoaroof wrote:
| I think Hardee's and Carl's Jr. were bought by the same
| company and then evolved towards each other.
| bombcar wrote:
| Carl's Jr was 'transferred' to CKE (Carl Karcher
| Enterprises) which then acquired Hardees, and Hardees
| became Carl's Jr in everything but name (as far as I can
| tell). What was interesting is the absolute numbers: The
| "merger" created a chain of 3,828 restaurants - 3,152
| Hardee's outlets in 40 states and 10 foreign countries
| and 676 Carl's Jr. outlets primarily in California.
| bombcar wrote:
| Yeah, I was thinking of the ubiquity of "street food hot
| dogs" which are now basically gone (Costco still has hot
| dogs, however, and baseball stadiums are required to have
| hot dogs).
| Retric wrote:
| In antiquity it was more what we might call street food
| or fast casual.
|
| What really defines fast food is mass production and
| uniformity.
| pas wrote:
| Also big brands usually deliver on consistency. Making the
| same (or very similar) wine year from year on the order or
| hundreds of thousands of bottles ... yeah, that takes some
| skill, and favorable location doesn't hurt either :) For
| example see the big wineries in New Zealand.
|
| But usually if you want something that's exceptional you
| have to spend a lot on throwing away the unexceptional
| parts. Not every year will be good, and even if the weather
| was good there's still no guarantee the wine will be
| amazing. Yet the costs are there. That's why there's a very
| hefty premium on brands that _only_ deliver the top-top-top
| quality. (Obviously they sell the grapes /wine that did not
| make it under a different brand, but sssh.)
| fiddlerwoaroof wrote:
| I assume the big brands get part of the way there by
| mixing old and new wine, though.
| taneq wrote:
| Very true. I live in a wine region and an $8 bottle from
| the local booze shop can sometimes be found in restaurants
| on the other side of the world for $50+. Is not just that
| cheap wine is often as good as expensive wine, sometimes
| it's exactly the same thing.
| 78124781 wrote:
| I once met a local winemaker from a tiny winery in a
| foreign country who was proud to say that their wine was
| being served a restaurant in the US. I asked them how
| much they thought the wine would be priced at given that
| it was their entry-level wine. The winemaker estimated
| $20-25. We looked it up--it was $60.
| kube-system wrote:
| Above $60, you're mostly paying for name, provenance, or
| prestige rather than taste.
| surement wrote:
| Just because you don't know how to appreciate well-made
| things doesn't mean that they're strictly ostentatious.
| kube-system wrote:
| You can absolutely get a top quality wine for <$60. Even
| the fancy 18th century European wineries that sell
| $10,000 bottles of wine will tell you this.
|
| Scarcity is the number one factor that determines the
| price of an expensive wine. A good quality wine from a
| recent vintage will cost less than an equally desirable
| wine from an older vintage, simply because people haven't
| drank most of it yet.
| mihaaly wrote:
| I appears so that they talk about the sell price and not
| about how well it is made.
| taneq wrote:
| How'd you get 'strictly' from 'mostly'?
| surement wrote:
| added it in after reading my comment but not re-reading
| the parent
| triceratops wrote:
| "Ostentation - pretentious and vulgar display, especially
| of wealth and luxury"
|
| To a person who can't tell the difference between cheap
| and expensive wine, expensive wine is "strictly
| ostentatious" by definition.
| lvass wrote:
| Absolutely true in South america. I've had a ton of
| different sub-$5 wines. In my experience, if you randomly
| buy 20 bottles of $5 wines, one is better than a $100
| bottle, plus you also get some 5 great wines, 10 good ones
| and the rest works for cooking.
|
| The best wine I've ever drank cost less than $3 and was
| produced in a tropical (21 South), 800m altitude region of
| Minas Gerais, Brazil. Never assume wine is bad because it's
| cheap or from somewhere.
| davnicwil wrote:
| > The best wine I've ever drank
|
| Do you remember what this was called, or specifically
| where? If I'm ever there I'd love to find this!
| lvass wrote:
| Quinta dos Guimaraes, from Santa Barbara do Monte Verde.
| It's super hard to find and they might be defunct, it's
| been quite a few years.
| voldacar wrote:
| It really depends a lot on the region. For example, price
| and quality don't correlate that much in Burgundy. It's
| easy to spend a few hundred dollars on a mediocre bottle.
| retrac wrote:
| I learned the secret in my mid-20s whilst brewing my own
| cider as a poor student.
|
| Take some decent apple juice without preservatives. Add a bit
| of yeast; baking yeast for bread at the supermarket will do
| just fine. Observe basic sanitation principles. Add some
| sugar, perhaps 150 g per litre of juice. Leave the concoction
| in a cool, dry place for a few months. A one-way seal for the
| CO2 release is preferable (a balloon works) but is not
| strictly required; leave the cap on loose. Carefully pour off
| the result into a new vessel. Let this settle for another
| month.
|
| A very palatable drink results at about 4 - 5% alcohol by
| volume. People figured this out thousands of years ago. And
| they did not have plastic bottles, germ theory, or infinite
| hot water on tap. It's trivial to make an alcoholic beverage.
| The rest is finesse. And posturing.
| spelunker wrote:
| Beer was probably "discovered" when mashed up grains
| started fermenting wildly. It's definitely not difficult to
| make alcohol if one desires!
|
| I do think something can be said to effort put in vs what
| you get however - I've enjoyed some very good beer that
| took a little bit more work than letting some grain lying
| around ferment. Of course, on the other hand, plenty of
| beers are brewed in Belgium using essentially that method,
| so it all comes down to one's taste I suppose.
| tomcam wrote:
| Next time I'm in the pen expect a call from me for that
| recipe
| shrubble wrote:
| Obligatory Pruno link from Modern Drunkard magazine (some
| profanity) : https://drunkard.com/11-03-jailhouse-3/
| Firmwarrior wrote:
| haha, that was a great read
|
| > I expelled all my breath and sucked down another glass.
| Vinegary, yeasty, with a rusty shank of an aftertaste. I
| was feeling a slight buzz, but I didn't think I could
| stomach another glass. It was booze all right, but two
| glasses was my non-incarcerated limit.
| Zamicol wrote:
| "Penn & Teller's Bullshit":
|
| https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=295904514122934
| ramesh31 wrote:
| >My wife and I love to cook, have discussed opening our own
| restaurant, have eaten at lots of very expensive "haute
| cuisine" restaurants and have tasted lots of wines.
|
| Please don't make the mistake of thinking "I like to cook"
| means "I would like to run a restaraunt". They're two
| completely different things.
| wwweston wrote:
| Can you elaborate on this? I'm sure there's more to it and
| it could be great to know what some of the specifics are,
| but it also seems like _someone_ who likes to cook is going
| to need to be present for a good restaurant
| [deleted]
| deadbunny wrote:
| Think of the distance between "I like playing video
| games" and "I want to work for an AAA developer".
| wwweston wrote:
| "I like playing video games" would be analogous to "I
| like dining out."
|
| "I like making video games" would be analogous "I like to
| cook."
|
| Of course "I like making video games" might _not_ mean
| "I want to work for an AAA developer", but the reasons
| why would probably be different than those you wouldn't
| want to make a commercial indie title / open your own
| restaurant.
| padjo wrote:
| Watch a few episodes of Kitchen Nightmares and you'll get
| the gist.
| 2b3a51 wrote:
| Perhaps a quick skim of Anthony Bourdain's _Kitchen
| Confidential_ might help. His position is that running a
| restaurant is very different from cooking for yourself
| and friends.
|
| But obviously many people do set up and run restaurants.
| triceratops wrote:
| The restaurant industry is brutal, low margin, and cut-
| throat. There's long hours and extremely hard work, and
| customers who don't give a shit about you. If you have a
| successful restaurant, it's probably because you have a
| good location (modulo those Michelin-starred gems in out-
| of-the-way small towns). So the landlord will do their
| best to extract any surplus value you generated through
| your skill and ingenuity. I've never worked in the
| industry and I've still heard of all of this.
|
| Professional cooks have a completely different working
| style to skilled amateurs. They move faster and more
| precisely, and are able to juggle far more things at a
| time. It's a massive step up.
|
| Plus the skillset involved in cooking well is orthogonal
| to what's needed to run a successful restaurant. Your
| major costs are labor, rent, and raw materials, and you
| need a certain personality to drive those down. Customers
| tend to be price-sensitive (again, apart from those high-
| end places) so you don't have as much power on the
| revenue side.
|
| I love cooking. I'm never working in the food business.
| umanwizard wrote:
| Indeed they're different things, but they're surely at
| least correlated. (A workaholic personality is probably
| more strongly correlated)
| kube-system wrote:
| Potentially that may have been the content of their
| discussion.
| spockz wrote:
| You seem very experienced at wine and food, so I hope you
| know this. I can taste a wine and like it just fine if I
| haven't eaten or drink anything else. But if I eat anything,
| even just the tiniest bit, the wine to me just becomes sour
| and I can only taste the alcohol. This completely ruined wine
| for me. Is this common?
| coding123 wrote:
| whoa that is weird. When I taste wine these days, I can
| ONLY taste vinegar. I'm not even sure why that is.
| zasdffaa wrote:
| I don't have synesthesia to any notable degree but what you're
| describing kind of makes sense as being it. Not tastes for me,
| but sounds can elicit such responses eg. a sound having
| graphite steel I can well imagine. Or other things that would
| baffle another person.
|
| Frankly, "notes of blue and a hint of graphite steel" sounds
| too remote from normal experiences to be consciously made up -
| I mean, who's going to relate to that anyway?
| garrickvanburen wrote:
| I've blind tasted beer numerous times in multiple different
| contexts.
|
| Even participated in a session called "tasting on the right
| side of your brain" all about identifying and interrogating
| those more abstract impression.
|
| As poetic as they are - they carry insight and information both
| about the taster and the liquid that - without interrogation
| even the taster maybe unaware of.
| dehrmann wrote:
| > But I recently watched the documentary Somm, about expert wine-
| tasters trying to pass the Master Sommelier examination. As part
| of their test, they have to blind-taste six wines and, for each,
| identify the grape variety, the year it was produced, and tasting
| notes (e.g., "aged orange peel" or "hints of berry").
|
| Also fresh tennis ball.
| pas wrote:
| > In 2001 Frederick Brochet of the University of Bordeaux asked
| 54 wine experts to test two glasses of wine [...] that one had
| been coloured red with a flavourless dye.
|
| Well, red wine is red because it's colored by the skin of the
| grapes.
|
| I guess the critique is that the tasters were inconsistent, they
| used [very] different language for the wine(s).
|
| Which is definitely interesting. But not that surprising :)
|
| > "jammy"
|
| I had no idea what they meant by jammy, but according to google
| it's very fruity wine, low acidity, low in tannin. Ah!
| JimRoepcke wrote:
| I mean sure it runs Windows binaries on Linux, but calling it
| fake is a bit harsh.
| noodlesUK wrote:
| I am no wine guru but I do know one thing for sure. There is
| definitely such a thing as _bad_ wine. If paying a little more
| would guarantee not having a terrible bottle, that would make me
| pretty happy. In the real world I 've not found that to be true
| though.
| metadat wrote:
| The thing is, wine "quality" is entirely subjective. I've not
| found much correlation between price and whether I will like it
| or not. The only safe bet is that if it tastes too strongly of
| vinegar, probably people won't like it as much. But some
| European wines (Spain and Italy) intentionally produce wine
| with a non-negligible amount of vinegar taste.
|
| I know of a single maker that only puts out wines that I
| consider good or at least okay: Heitz.
|
| Heitz is pricey though, and a $6 bottle of Barefoot or Charles
| Shaw two buck chuck can be just as good or better than a huge
| assortment of $50 or $300 bottles of swill. In my experience.
| fullshark wrote:
| I'd be shocked if you thought there's was actually no
| correlation if you're thinking of a price range from $5 to
| $100+. The worst wines by far I've had have been the ultra
| cheap stuff. Once you get above like $20 or whatever your
| personal threshold is though the variance is much smaller in
| terms of quality I'd say.
| metadat wrote:
| You do make a good point; the worst of the worst tend to be
| the ultra cheapies.
|
| With that said, there are unbounded arrays of cheap _and
| expensive selections_ that all taste like shit (again, in
| my opinion - others likely perceive them differently).
|
| I've met plenty of people who happily drink something I
| consider 100% not palatable or suitable for human
| consumption.
| fullshark wrote:
| Yeah bad (as in unappealing to my palate) expensive wines
| are bad in an entirely different unique, "expensive
| tasting" way.
| sbf501 wrote:
| > The thing is, wine quality is entirely subjective.
|
| The article says it isn't. And I agree. Go buy a two-buck
| chuck at Trader Joe's, and a $50 Chateauneuf de Pape from
| 2018. One is an acrid, acidic fruit punch, the other is a
| balanced soft tannin delight. I guarantee your palette can
| tell the difference, or your money back. :)
| metadat wrote:
| Agreed, they have different qualities. These properties
| don't translate to people automatically preferring the
| expensive one because it's "better"; it's only "different".
| csa wrote:
| > a $6 bottle of Barefoot can be just as good or better than
| $50 or $300 bottles of swill
|
| As someone who has blind tasted many wines...
|
| - I can see not being able to tell a difference between $50
| bottles and $300 bottles, and even preferring the less
| expensive option. Some of the tastes can be very subtle, and
| sometimes the more expensive wines need to be cellared before
| they really start to shine.
|
| - I honestly don't think I have ever had a $50 plus bottle of
| wine that I would not have preferred over Barefoot, which has
| approximately zero taste markers of a wine made to taste
| good.
|
| - There are inexpensive wines (sub-$8) that can hold their
| own versus $20-30 bottles, but that almost always involves
| generous use of oak chips and an audience that doesn't mind
| the imbalanced flavor profile. Most people don't mind the
| imbalance, especially since the wines are usually
| inexpensive, high alcohol, and taste better than wine at a
| similar price point.
|
| - Folks who can't differentiate wine taste may be "non-
| tasters". I dislike this term of art, but it's folks who have
| fewer taste buds per unit area of their tongue. Tell-tale
| signs are people who salt everything and/or use hot sauce to
| an extreme level.
|
| - For folks on a budget who want to drink decent wine, Trader
| Joe's Reserve wines ~$10 a bottle) punch way above their
| weight. These are basically $20-30 retail bottles of wine
| that needed to be cleared at the winery cellars quickly to
| make space for a new vintage. "Shiners" is the term of art
| for these bottles pre-labeling.
| 2devnull wrote:
| "honestly don't think I have ever had a $50 plus bottle of
| wine that I would not have preferred over Barefoot, which
| has approximately zero taste markers of a wine made to
| taste good."
|
| I can't believe that. I've never had barefoot and probably
| never will but there's a lot of totally undrinkable, maybe
| even semi-poisonous, expensive wine. It's not even rare. If
| you buy from a good merchant this is less of a problem but
| still, expensive wines go bad, and some were never good to
| begin with.
| barrkel wrote:
| The most likely expensive dud you're going to see is aged
| Burgundy reds. Many don't make it.
|
| Very old red wine (e.g. 30+ years), if it's not fortified
| or a dessert wine, is also not particularly pleasant.
| I've had some very famous Bordeaux from some celebrated
| 70s vintage, a sip from Hedonism Wines in London, and it
| was very much not worth it; more than anything else, it
| reminded me of clothes in an old person's closet.
|
| On the other hand, the same day I had a sip of something
| sweet from the 19th century - like 1898 or something -
| from Crimea, and it wasn't bad. It wasn't great, but it
| wasn't bad or undrinkable either. Might have been related
| to these batches -
| https://quillandpad.com/2020/07/21/the-massandra-
| collection-...
| csa wrote:
| > but there's a lot of totally undrinkable, maybe even
| semi-poisonous, expensive wine
|
| "A lot"? Really? Change your wine merchant if that's the
| case.
|
| That said, sure, I mean, if you want to include flawed
| wines like ones with brett, ones that haven't been stored
| properly (e.g., in the sun), wines way past the their
| peak, etc., then one will certainly run into some bad
| wines _at any price point_.
|
| That's sort of a given, imho, and is in no way a
| reflection of the quality of the wine.
|
| That certainly doesn't in general make the high end wine
| "fake" or not worth a higher price (at least to some
| point), which is the point of the linked article.
| yamtaddle wrote:
| I could see one becoming convinced price has no correlation
| with quality given the bullshit that's sold in the $10-20
| range. "Why, this was $15 but it's plainly worse than the
| $8 bottle I had last week!" There's some real crap in that
| bracket, at least around here. Especially French and
| Californian. I get the impression France drops their trash
| on us (the USA) in that price range, relying on their
| national "brand" to sell it for more than it's worth. Above
| that range, they're consistently damn good, of course.
|
| [EDIT] As for Californian wine in that range, it seems to
| have a problem with marketing-over-substance. I expect
| trying to compete in that range on quality is...
| frustrating.
| csa wrote:
| > I could see one becoming convinced price has no
| correlation with quality given the bullshit that's sold
| in the $10-20 range.
|
| Yeah. There seems to be a lot of variability below $20.
| That said, it'll you do the math, it's tough to make a
| wine with a good and distinct character below $20 for
| reds and $15 for whites (I've seen it, but it's
| relatively rare).
|
| Also, totally agree with your edit. California wines have
| a lot of challenges with marketing over substance across
| the whole range or price points.
| jules wrote:
| When eating a dish, I can usually identify the ingredients
| and spices by flavour, but different wines taste more or
| less the same to me. Some taste a bit better than others,
| but the difference is minimal. Spending $50 more on the
| food in a restaurant is going to make an enormously bigger
| difference than spending $50 more on wine. In fact, I find
| that _not_ drinking wine at all usually makes for a better
| experience if the food is good, because the super strong
| flavour of wine destroys your ability to discern flavours
| on the next bite.
| jb_s wrote:
| Not speaking for everyone but I'm pretty sure a lot of
| people who love extreme hot sauces, it's not so much the
| flavour but that they just want to feel _something_ for
| once :o
| jasmer wrote:
| Yea I think probably most people can tell the difference
| between $6, $20 and $50 and then struggle beyond that (and
| beyond that it is very subjective).
|
| But for 'crap' 'ok' and 'good' and 'good+' categories I think
| it's actually fairly straight forward.
| namdnay wrote:
| > wine quality is entirely subjective
|
| I wouldn't go that far... there are many wines that everyone
| agrees are foul. La Villageoise for example? There's a reason
| it's 2E/L
|
| 6USD is what, 5.80E a bottle? That's already a lot more
| comfortable
| 13415 wrote:
| Anything related to taste and smell is partly subjective,
| partly intersubjective. The sense of smell varies from person
| to person due to genetic differences, different learned
| tastes, partial anosmia, etc. This is also the reason why one
| like a perfume and another one hates it. The chromatograph
| can analyze a substance objectively but every nose smells it
| a bit differently.
| KineticLensman wrote:
| In Croatia many years ago, we ordered the cheapest bottle on
| the wine list. It was disgusting. The locals were amazed that
| we didn't know to water it down before drinking.
| nradov wrote:
| When my grandparents lived in Croatia in the pre-WW2 years
| they used to mix a little wine into their water because the
| water quality was bad. I guess the wine killed the germs, or
| at least masked the taste of the water.
| aarroyoc wrote:
| That's also typical in Spain. In fact, most family
| restaurants offer free wine, but it's of that level of
| quality, so you usually mix it with sparkling water.
|
| Also, it's typical of young people to mix cheap wine with
| Coca-Cola, and have parties with that.
| mauvehaus wrote:
| That's actually a fairy delicious way to enjoy cheap wine,
| and I dare say it compares favorably to some of the
| digestifs in the world.
| foobarian wrote:
| It's typical to drink watered down wine with routine/non-
| fancy/on-the-road meals. The locals call it 'gemist' which is
| a germanism (gemischt = mixed). The wine used for this is
| bottom of the barrel, since it's a shame to waste good wine
| for this purpose.
| metadat wrote:
| Does the alcohol content end up diluted proportionally to
| something like 2-7% vs the usual 12-14%?
| betaby wrote:
| It is a tradition there? What is the name of that wine?
| Barrin92 wrote:
| I've done this experiment with friends a few times. Personal
| experience. Almost anyone can tell _really shitty_ wine from the
| rest, think your one or two bucks cardboard container wine.
| Almost nobody can tell a 10 euro bottle from a 100 euro bottle.
|
| This also goes for other food and drinks. It's the same with
| coffee. You can taste really cheap and awful coffee, but if
| anyone can tell me they can reliably differentiate between decent
| beans and one of those fancy "it was fermented and digested by a
| monkey" specialty brands I'm scpetical.
| femto wrote:
| It's fun to do a "blind tasting party".
|
| Get a bunch of friends to each bring a bottle. Maybe give a
| criteria, like a price range, so people don't feel obliged to
| impress with the price tag.
|
| All bottles are delivered to the kitchen at the beginning of the
| night, where the host puts each in a numbered paper bag. Each
| attendee gets a score sheet.
|
| Start serving, either by pouring or just putting a few bottles on
| the table at a time. It's a normal party, apart from each person
| giving each numbered wine a score, and conversation about the
| wine being an icebreaker.
|
| At the end of the night total up the scores and reveal the
| bottles, generally to some hilarity.
|
| It's fun to throw in a few wildcards. As the host, I threw in a
| couple of extra bottles: one well above the price range and
| another the cheapest I could find. (Found out after the event
| that an attendee also decanted a box into a bottle. All in the
| spirit!). I also poured all the left over bits from each bottle
| (not glasses!) into a bottle and served that up towards the end
| of the night.
|
| The cheap wildcard came second. The dregs came middle of the pack
| and the expensive bottle came below the dregs. It was a fun night
| and the guessing game really got people talking about what they
| liked and disliked, but they couldn't be pompous about it, unless
| they wanted to risk a ribbing at the end of the night.
|
| It also works with beers or homebrew.
| ericlewis wrote:
| My family often does this, but more like you have to figure out
| which wine is which out of 14 across many varieties and
| provenance. My wife and I both got 2nd and 3rd place with only
| mixing up two. Though it was less so what is cheap what is
| expensive, it is an interesting game nonetheless. We blamed the
| many years we spent in Napa on being so good :P
| cwkoss wrote:
| A fun variation on this is to provide two bottles. Cover the
| labels with sheets of paper.
|
| Pour everyone a serving of each (different color cups works
| best), and tell them that one bottle costs less than $10, one
| costs $95.
|
| The group will taste and discuss and usually reach a consensus
| on which wine is the better wine. Ask if anyone disagrees.
|
| Then, you reveal that both bottles were filled with the same
| boxed wine. It's really funny.
|
| I've done this 3 times, and never had anyone suggest that they
| were the same wine before the reveal.
| erehweb wrote:
| If you are interested in this topic, you may find the book "Gulp"
| interesting. https://maryroach.net/gulp.html The writer talks
| about wine and olive oil tasting, among other things.
| 13415 wrote:
| I learned to appreciate wines only after I moved to a wine
| producing country (Portugal). I cook once a week for my
| girlfriend and try to choose a different wine each time. After a
| few years you learn a bit, which ones you like and dislike, and
| how different wines are. It's a lot of fun. There is nothing fake
| about it.
| ravenstine wrote:
| The "fake" part is the idea that wines are objectively better
| than each other. Afficianados can invent their own standards,
| and that's fine, but those standards don't need to apply to
| people who simply want to _enjoy_ wine.
|
| What muddies the water is that wine has an association with
| aristocracy that has never been had with Coke and Pepsi, or
| pizza with pineapple vs no pineapple.
|
| Sure, wine is more complex than many other tastes, but so is
| beer, and beer has mostly been considered a blue collar affair,
| historically speaking.
|
| Everyone is right and wrong at the same time. All wine is good
| and all wine sucks. Any given bottle will be a hit or miss,
| regardless of price. With price, you may be getting a more rare
| varietal, but that doesn't mean your friends will appreciate
| it.
|
| A given wine needs to target its audience. Are your friends
| adventurous? Then you might actually consider sharing that
| bottle of Sagrantino, as they may appreciate the experience
| even if they don't like it that much. But if their tastes are
| generally more... conventional, then just go with that $9
| Cabernet Sauvingnon from Trader Joes that can't offend anybody.
| Do you have wine snob friends who you want to make jealous?
| Then the $300 bottle of whatever is right for you, as you'll
| not only be able to gloat but perhaps spend _less_ as you have
| an excuse not to crack it open until it "peaks" some time in
| the next century.
| 13415 wrote:
| There is nothing fake about that either. You don't have to
| pass a blind test, you usually see the wine. It's the same
| with food - the presentation counts, too. Or with almost any
| kind of luxury good. Almost any brand is more expensive than
| "no name" products even though the production costs are the
| same.
|
| Of course, people can be against luxury goods but the point
| is they're not getting it. People pay for brand and prestige,
| including some wine affiocionados (though not me). That's
| perfectly normal for luxury markets.
|
| By the way, beer is way less complex than wine. It's not even
| remotely comparable, primarily because beers are "designed"
| by professional brewers for specific target markets. You
| can't do that as easily with wine, it depends more on the
| grapes, weather, and location.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| I have not partaken, for some time, and when I did, I was an
| aficionado of such fine vintages as Mogen David 20/20, Night
| Train Express, and Thunderbird.
|
| However, I have friends that are very much into it, and will
| happily spend sick amounts of money on bottles of what to me, is
| just spoiled grape juice.
| majormajor wrote:
| I'm surprised these sorts of articles still get traction?
|
| Is this just a filter bubble thing? Is it "new" to many people
| even though it isn't to me?
|
| Or do we just like to feel snobby about knowing the truth?
| abvdasker wrote:
| I think this piece is more of a reaction to the hackneyed
| articles we've all seen about how wine knowledge is all bs.
| It's a qualification of those conclusions that does a good job
| of explaining that the reality is a little more complicated.
| gdubs wrote:
| We moved to a farm in wine country in the PNW years back, and I
| had this 'ah ha' moment. It was the summer before the pandemic,
| and we had friends visiting. We sat down to eat a meal we made
| with all of this local food. I took a sip of a wine from a
| vineyard nearby. That's when the term 'terroir' suddenly made
| sense. The wine had the same essence as the food we were eating,
| all being from the same region. But it was elevated. It's like,
| the celebration of all of this hard agricultural work. The cherry
| on top.
|
| People find ways to turn anything into a game. And status,
| striving, gaming - they enter into anything. But for me, I
| generally just keep a list of favorites. Reds often give me a
| headache, so a good red, to me, is one that does not. But I've
| grown to really like Rose, and it doesn't have to be summer.
|
| Anyway, there's _definitely_ good wine and bad wine. I think
| personally a good story contributes a lot more to the value of
| wine than its rating. But 'value' can be very subjective.
| badrabbit wrote:
| I don't disagree but I do have a question about the blind
| tasting: Is it possible that knowing about a wine's age or
| provenance allows our brain to focus on and look for specific
| details? For example, you can feed me meat and I might think it
| is delicious but soon after if you tell me it is snake or dog
| meat I will vomit all over the place and find that particular
| taste offending.
|
| Isn't taste just a signal interpreted by the brain?
|
| I am sure you all have seen those experiments with a fake hand
| next to the person's but they are blocked from seeing their real
| hand, they start feeling touch and pain on the fake hand! Can
| taste also be visually and mentally affected by sight or some
| other knowledge?
| kuon wrote:
| My neighbor loves to organize wine tasting session with friends,
| one day, he opened some bottle, and when I poured it, I added
| some apple juice (about 50%) and nobody in the group noticed
| anything. I know that a few expert can actually tell wine apart
| and categorize them, but I now know that most of the time people
| have no idea :)
| IforgotmyID wrote:
| In my local supermarket in Spain, they sell wine in a carton
| (like milk) for around 80 cents of an euro per litre. It is
| perfectly nice if you want to drink a glass with lunch, mix it
| with gaseosa in summer (like Sprite) or cook with it.
|
| They also sell cava for less than 5 euros a bottle. It makes a
| roast chicken on Sunday appear somewhat more festive. The first
| time a colleague in the UK told me about fruity or orange taste
| in wine I was completely perplexed as to what he meant.
| sebmellen wrote:
| The most interesting part of the article to me was this:
|
| > _Based on the theory of predictive coding, our brains first
| figure out what sensory stimuli should be, then see if there's
| any way they can shoehorn actual stimuli to the the expected
| pattern. If they can't, then the brain will just register the the
| real sensation, but as long as it's pretty close they'll just
| return the the prediction. For example, did you notice that the
| word "the" was duplicated three times in this paragraph? Your
| brain was expecting to read a single word "the," just as it
| always has before, and when you're reading quickly, the mild
| deviation from expected stimuli wasn't enough to raise any
| alarms._
|
| I believe Vsauce had a video on this topic one. I'll edit the
| content if I find it.
| blindriver wrote:
| Yes, it's scientifically proven to be fake, but let people have
| some fun, what's the big deal? There are worse crimes than
| pretending to have the ability to super-taste wine.
| JoeAltmaier wrote:
| If it takes a super-taster to tell the difference, then I'm safe
| paying for $6 Chuck
| Enginerrrd wrote:
| Interestingly, as I understand Charles Shaw buys suprlus wine
| from nice vinyards and blends them to make their offering. So
| the wine is likely to be totally inconsistent, but probably ok
| to even occasionally good.
|
| Personally, I think red blends are often better than single
| wine varietals. They're often perceived as cheaper, but from a
| taste perspective, I find they're usually more balanced in
| flavors and more complex as a result.
| 78124781 wrote:
| I really wonder how much of the suspicion of wine comes from the
| class-conflict accoutrements and marketing.
|
| I used to be a big wine skeptic. It seemed pretentious,
| overpriced, and boring. The people who liked it were the kind of
| people I disliked. Most of the places in the town I grew up in
| all had the same "big reds" at ridiculous prices. Wine was the
| thing that cost $12 that you paid $60 for at the local steakhouse
| to look important.
|
| Then, I moved to a lesser-known wine-producing state and started
| actually trying wine. It took some time--and there were more than
| a few encounters with snobs and commercial puffery that made me
| want to rethink it--but it soon opened up into a huge world that
| I had no idea about before. It was far more fascinating and
| enduring than previous interests in whiskey or craft beer.
|
| It's a pity that wine gets such a pretentious reputation. It's a
| fascinating blend of chemistry, geology, geography, and culture
| that at its heart is an agricultural enterprise.
| AlbertCory wrote:
| I keep teasing this, but my friend Jerry and I have done a whole
| series of Triangle Tests on various aspects of making coffee.
| We've finally settled on him publishing a Just The Facts, Ma'am
| doc, and me publishing the narrative. Real soon now.
|
| Anyhow:
|
| Our philosophy is "It doesn't matter what the experts can taste.
| What matters is what _you_ can taste. "
|
| So for wine, it's easy for you & your friends or relatives to put
| out three glasses, two the same and one different, and see if the
| taster can pick out the outlier. If they can't, why should they
| care which one WineSpectator says is better?
| IshKebab wrote:
| > They look at 6,175 tastings from 17 wine tasting events and
| find that, among ordinary people (nonexperts), "the correlation
| between price and overall rating is small and negative,
| suggesting that individuals on average enjoy more expensive wines
| slightly less."
|
| Wines at wine tastings are hardly a random selection. They should
| look at supermarket wines.
|
| In my experience paying more (over PS8) definitely increases the
| _chance_ of getting a nice bottle, but it doesn 't guarantee it.
| But that effect is only true up to maybe PS15 at the most. Above
| that you're throwing money away.
| jacobsenscott wrote:
| > suggesting that individuals on average enjoy more expensive
| wines slightly less
|
| This is me. Every time I decide to splurge on a bottle of wine I
| don't like it. Sticking with my 3 liter boxes of costco cabernet.
| bsder wrote:
| The Pepsi Challenge has _LOTS_ of faults and isn 't a great
| example.
|
| I believe that one of the "debunkings" about the Pepsi Challenge
| was that people preferred the initial swig of Pepsi but preferred
| Coke if the question was asked after more consumption, after the
| beverage had warmed up, etc. Effectively, you could set up the
| situation to get people to choose one or the other quite easily.
| antognini wrote:
| One of my professors in grad school was really into wine and
| every couple of years he would put on an after-hours wine tasting
| class for a semester. One of the points he made was that there
| are absolutely wines which are objectively better and worse and
| that experts can reliably tell them apart. He had met enough
| experts who could identify a vineyard and vintage blind to know
| there was something to it. But sitting on top of that there is a
| frothy market that is driven by fads, speculation, and hype.
|
| He was of the opinion that generally speaking the quality of a
| typical wine increases monotonically with price up until around
| the $40 range with the big steps around the $5, $10, and $20
| price points. But above $50 or so, you're no longer paying for
| higher quality, per se. It's more that you are paying for a
| unique flavor profile and reliability. But unless you're seeking
| out that particular flavor profile, you can get a bottle that is
| just as good for $30-40 (and occasionally even cheaper). And
| above a few hundred dollars it's all just fads, speculation, and
| hype. (He liked to say that the people who buy those wines have
| "more money than sense.") They're good wines, but you can get a
| bottle that is just as good for a fraction of the price.
| SV_BubbleTime wrote:
| > "more money than sense."
|
| I've always enjoyed "more dollars than cents" for the dual
| meaning if you know the phrase is supposed to be "sense".
| alfalfasprout wrote:
| This is IMO where I've arrived at too. Some wine really sucks.
| Some wine is incredible. I've definitely been surprised by some
| <$20 bottles but in general $50+ wines are not going to have
| the same flaws that are common in cheaper bottles.
|
| With that said... I've had some terrible bottles of $100+ wine
| from well regarded wineries.
| 2devnull wrote:
| Wine makers can easily pick out flaws of different sorts. Wine
| tasters and wine makers do not taste wines in the same way
| based on my experience. Some flaws, like Bret, can improve the
| score of wines given by tasters for certain styles, but wine
| makers generally scoff at such flaws.
| ethbr0 wrote:
| If you're dealing in goods of non-obvious quality, where
| total supply volume >> total demand volume, markets get
| weird.
|
| See: beauty products, wine, art
|
| There are people who can discern quality reliably... but
| those people are an extremely small portion of the total
| market.
|
| Consequently, things that are not quality (chiefly, marketing
| and price) start to become dominant features.
| noughtme wrote:
| > Some flaws, like Bret
|
| I cannot wait for the current trend of brettanomyces
| contaminated "natural" wines to die.
| barrkel wrote:
| Bret and the weird hay / mousey flavour from natural wines
| are different things.
|
| I too am not a fan of natural wines largely because of the
| additional flavours, but normal sulphite-laden wine can
| come with a dose of bret and it's different - I
| particularly enjoy it in some Cote Rotie producers, where
| it comes out as a hint of smokey bacon.
| acchow wrote:
| > But unless you're seeking out that particular flavor profile
|
| It's not just seeking out a particular flavor profile. If you
| want to experience something novel for your mouth and you've
| been drinking only $20 bottles for years, you will never
| encounter anything new. But if you try $100 bottles, you're
| much more likely to accidentally discover something new
| (whether you like it or not is subjective)
|
| Continuously searching for new experiences is an expensive
| hobby.
| wmil wrote:
| > He was of the opinion that generally speaking the quality of
| a typical wine increases monotonically with price up until
| around the $40 range with the big steps around the $5, $10, and
| $20 price points.
|
| I'm always amused when I hear this, because I live in Ontario.
| Our alcohol laws are set up to heavily favour local wines.
|
| Of course Ontario reds are consistently both more expensive and
| worse than foreign wines.
|
| Higher price doesn't mean higher quality here.
| Hermitian909 wrote:
| Not OP but good friends with some highend winemakers who hold
| a similar but slightly different view, which is that below
| $20 dollars (or whatever the breakpoint is now) most vinyards
| generally can't afford the processes that allow for the best
| class of wine to be _reliably_ produced, and above that price
| point, most can afford those processes.
|
| You do occasionally get cheap wines that hit above their
| weight, but that's unusual.
|
| More common, you get wineries hitting below their weight for
| a number of reason the winemakers aren't very good, there are
| issues with vinyard, it's a bad harvest, or the winemaker
| just wants bigger profits and is trying to convince people
| their wine is better than it is.
|
| As an example of vinyard issues, I know a man whose vinyard
| produces very poor wine because his soil is rich in
| serpentine, which makes the wine smell funny. Even doing
| everything "right" his wine is not going to taste as a good
| as that made identically by someone with better soil.
|
| This does not mean that wines at that price point _must_ be
| good. I know someone who made the mistake of buying in a
| vinyard that was extremely rich in serpentine
| nier wrote:
| How does red wine from Ontario end up more expensive than the
| one from abroad when the laws are set up to favor the wine
| from Ontario?
| extragood wrote:
| I'd guess cost of labor is a major factor.
|
| If you buy any California wine, for instance, it was picked
| by a migrant worker. Times haven't changed much since
| Grapes of Wrath, other than it's typically Latino workers
| rather than Dust Bowl refugees.
| danielfoster wrote:
| Without more information, I would assume that even with
| preferential tax treatment Ontario wine could be more
| expensive due to economies of scale. Production must be
| vastly lower compared to California, France, etc.
| nitwit005 wrote:
| But, there is the usual trick there. How do you transform your
| wine from a $5 wine to a $10 wine? Raise the price by $5. The
| assumption of quality is something exploitable.
| forgotusername6 wrote:
| A friend of mine from uni was really into wine. Won the varsity
| wine tasting competition. He bought a case of Italian reds
| because he knew it was his weakness. You absolutely can get good
| at wine, but not from casually drinking a glass every so often.
| Like all disciplines it takes practice.
| fleddr wrote:
| I simply consider it a type of harmless overconsumption, an
| expensive status-driven hobby not backed by rationalism.
|
| It comes in many shapes and forms. Coffee snobs. People that buy
| a Rolex. Or have a 100K audio setup to match their supernatural
| hearing.
|
| It doesn't have to make objective sense, as long as it makes
| sense in your head.
| e10jc wrote:
| I've had a lot of red wine in my life; like, probably too much.
| The only bottle with a memorable taste came from a wine tour in
| Napa Valley where they said half the field was destroyed in a
| fire, so they were getting rid of the rest for cheap. The wine
| was super smoky... and absolutely delicious. I wonder why that
| never became a thing.
| doubled112 wrote:
| Probably difficult and expensive to consistently burn the field
| down.
| hoherd wrote:
| That's what we have PG&E for: Peaty Grapes and Ethanol.
| preinheimer wrote:
| Maybe happening more often with the wildfires these days
| milderworkacc wrote:
| We had a lot of smoke tainted "experimental" wines out from
| Australian vineyards as 2019 and 2020 releases - some were
| really interesting, others simply dreadful (with winemakers
| just glad you were happy to take a punt and get rid of it for
| them).
|
| Not sure repeating the bushfires that created those releases is
| a long term strategy though...
| jahsome wrote:
| You may find you like peaty single malt scotches.
| bergenty wrote:
| I once asked for a very smoky whisky and was bought out
| something completely clear.
| LastTrain wrote:
| I've had some incredible wines, but it is beyond fucked up that
| you can lay down $40 for a bottle of trash, and that is just OK.
| In what other industry is the quality so inconsistent?
| argc wrote:
| I loved this article. My take away would be - there are
| differences between wines, some people are good at telling them
| apart, but people make mistakes and can be tricked, so take
| everything you hear about wine with a grain of salt.
| bell-cot wrote:
| Is there _anything_ which involves both...
|
| (1) lots of subtle and subjective judgement calls
|
| (2) humans yearning to show off their wealth / sophistication /
| status
|
| ...which is NOT fake or widely-faked?
| JasonFruit wrote:
| I can _totally_ tell the difference in sound between a long-
| pattern Strad and a golden-period one, so you just back off,
| champ.
| TremendousJudge wrote:
| Text editor choice. Those are definitely, completely, for sure
| real.
| bombcar wrote:
| There are zero subjective calls there, however. My choices
| are objectively correct and laid down by God Himself, all
| others are ontologically evil.
| TheDong wrote:
| You can "no true scottsman" your way to make that true or
| false, depending.
|
| I might say "Cars and yachts are not so widely faked, but are
| both status symbols", but then you might say "ah, but those are
| less subjective. A yacht objectively does not sink, and a car
| objectively needs less maintenance or goes faster or has better
| ride quality"
|
| I might say "having a subjectively defined set of books on your
| bookshelf is a sign of sophistication and status, and is not
| widely faked", but you might say "ah, but the books are
| objective, having 1984 and K&R C are objectively a sign of
| programmer status"
|
| I might say "owning a 'nice house' in a big city is a status
| symbol, 'nice' is very subjective, but it's not widely faked",
| to which you will point out reality is fake and I cannot even
| prove houses are real in the first place.
| tptacek wrote:
| I don't know about judging the binary, but there are more- and
| less- faked luxury good appreciations. Whiskey is less faked
| than wine is (but, like most things, the distinctions blur as
| you go up in price; that makes, like, a kind of basic economic
| sense, right?)
| fumeux_fume wrote:
| A nice thoughtful piece on tasting wine. Under scrutiny,
| sensational conclusions typically fall apart and sometimes they
| really tell you more about the "experts" than about wine.
| Fortunately for me, I can enjoy wine at many different price-
| points. However, I usually find the bottles which move me the
| most are priced at $50+.
| Havoc wrote:
| It's unfortunate that the price section of the article isn't a
| bit more nuanced. There is definitely a big difference - it just
| has diminishing returns effect and the drop off price point is
| likely lower than most experts are willing to admit
| tamaharbor wrote:
| All I know about wine is that it comes in a box.
| rosnd wrote:
| A large plastic jug, actually.
| Cupertino95014 wrote:
| Not true. Sometimes it's in a bottle with a screw cap.
| sbf501 wrote:
| TL;DR -- "Wine is not fake. Wine experts aren't fake either, but
| they believe some strange things, are far from infallible, and
| need challenges and blinded trials to be kept honest. How far
| beyond wine you want to apply this is left as an exercise for the
| reader."
|
| It is a showoff sport. Insane wine prices are there for rich
| people who have too much money to spend, or people who are in
| desperate need of validation. We all know someone in a McMansion
| with premium beige textured walls and a few Lexus who has a "wine
| cellar" that they can't stop talking about. The market is mostly
| for them.
|
| I say "mostly" because like TFA says, some people really can tell
| the difference, but I feel bad that they have to pay so much more
| due to the idiot tax.
| alistairSH wrote:
| Yeah, there's definitely some learned skill in IDing wines by
| region/variety.
|
| My "system" for picking wines has two approaches: - Buy Trader
| Joe's Reserve in a variety I enjoy - Visit local wine shop,
| tell them my budget and what I'm eating for dinner, and buy
| whatever they suggest
|
| Both approaches yield pretty good results for not much money.
|
| I'll leave "risking" the $5 bottles from Safeway to somebody
| else. The $10-$30 bottles I get are consistently good enough,
| and often better than good enough.
| mfrisbie wrote:
| I took the introductory sommelier exam as a hobbyist, but I was
| in a room with ~200 people in the industry. We collectively blind
| tasted about a dozen wines, and I watched as people around me
| mostly guessed correctly with astonishing accuracy.
|
| There may be some nonsense in wine tasting, but it is definitely
| possible to develop a body of knowledge and experience that
| allows one to identify wines based on only your senses. It's
| important to note that the CMS only includes traditionally
| produced wines in the blind tasting - no curveballs (pinot grigio
| grown in Alaska or whatever).
| bombcar wrote:
| Some people say you can't tell the difference between Pepsi,
| Coke, and the diet versions of both, but I certainly can.
|
| I've no doubt a sommelier can tell differences between wines.
|
| What I do suspect is that you can enjoy moderately priced wines
| just as well as many more expensive ones.
| mfrisbie wrote:
| I suspect there's a chicken and egg effect with pricing and
| blind tasting. Someone who can identify wines blind surely
| knows how much each region/producer/style costs, and based on
| that would assign a guessed price. Example: Paulliac is
| expensive, this tastes like a Paulliac, therefore wines that
| taste this must also be expensive.
| lisper wrote:
| As someone who ran a wine-tasting group for several years I can
| tell you this: there are definitely discernible differences
| between wines. What there is not, however, is any kind of
| absolute standard for what constitutes a "good" wine. Different
| people like different things. There are two things that makes
| wines expensive, and neither of them necessarily correlates with
| whether a particular wine will taste good _to you_ :
|
| 1. Old wines cost more because you have to pay for the storage.
|
| 2. Low-production wines that have an affluent following cost more
| because supply and demand.
|
| And that's it. There is absolutely nothing wrong with you if you
| if you prefer a Gallo Rhine Wine in a box to a Romanee Conti.
|
| That said, there is definitely a skill and an art to being a
| Sommelier, and that is the ability to take someone's description
| of what they like and match it to what's on their wine list.
| There is no such thing as a "good wine" independent of any
| particular person's tastes (except if you have a wine that has,
| say, turned to vinegar) but there is definitely such a thing as a
| good sommelier.
| [deleted]
| w_for_wumbo wrote:
| I feel like the bigger argument to make here, is that taste
| itself is fake. It's an illusion created by our brain, by taking
| in all of the various factors and determining whether we should
| be rewarded by it or not.
|
| We see countless time color has effect on taste, scent has an
| effect on taste, mood has an effect on taste, expectations have
| an effect on taste.
|
| Taste therefore isn't this static thing that we seem to think of
| it as.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2022-11-21 23:00 UTC)