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Semiconductor CEO trying to make the world's best Pinot Noir
- valuearb 9y agoAnd since people can't tell most wines apart, what's the point? http://www.realclearscience.com/blog/2014/08/the_most_infamous_study_on_wine_tasting.html http://www.realclearscience.com/blog/2014/08/the_most_infamo... Most people can't tell a red from a white by taste.
- mmmpop 9y agoThe difference in pinot noir and say, cabernet sauv is like night and day, so I'm not sure what you're talking about.
- shallot_router 9y agoSure, but they probably meant "would an average person be able to differentiate TJ Rodgers Pinot Noir from another high quality winery's Pinot Noir"?
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- NoPiece 9y agoMost people could differentiate them, but wouldn't be able to identify the higher quality wine.
- barrkel 9y agoBurgundy pinot vs new world pinot? If they're a fan, they'd have little trouble spotting the Burgundy.
- NoPiece 9y agoI agree, but the parent said average person, so I was thinking of someone less experienced.
- Godel_unicode 9y agoThis is exactly the problem; studies are done where random person who has a glass now and then can't tell food-coloring altered white from red, readers see "nobody can tell wines apart".
- mmmpop 9y agoWell, the last statement doesn't imply that: > Most people can't tell a red from a white by taste. I most certainly can! But I do agree, sometimes it's hard to judge the cheap wine vs the expensive ones, but we're talking $25 bottle to a $40 bottle. I don't have a lot of difficulty picking out the $8 vs the $25 from purely anecdotal experience. I am determined to double-blind myself at some point though.
- castis 9y agoThere will always be a market for a high quality version of whatever you can think of.
- jcoffland 9y agobut not at any price.
- Godel_unicode 9y agoYou think there's not a race to the top in the wine-as-status-symbol market? https://www.wine-searcher.com/find/paulet+rsrv+louis+xvi+extra+vieilles+fine+champagne+cognac+france/0 https://www.wine-searcher.com/find/paulet+rsrv+louis+xvi+ext...
- malchow 9y agoI think this is a common misconception. Various tests have asked ordinary people to determine what wine is expensive and what isn't. They can't. (Also, if people know a wine is expensive, they don't enjoy it more. They enjoy it less. At least according to one well controlled study: http://www.wine-economics.org/aawe/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/Vol.3-No.1-2008-Evidence-from-a-Large-Sample-of-Blind-Tastings.pdf http://www.wine-economics.org/aawe/wp-content/uploads/2012/1...) That doesn't mean that very fine distinctions between wines cannot be independently and blindly detected by both experts and amateurs.
- JumpCrisscross 9y agoPrices are set at the margin [1]. Most people can't differentiate high-quality and low-quality wines. But some can. They are on the margin and will set prices. As an anecdote, I can blindly identify with pricing in respect of certain regions and grapes, e.g. Valpolicella, Amarone and the Cabernets. (That is to say, I will blindly prefer the higher-priced bottles over lower-priced ones.) I am willing to pay a premium for those. With other grapes, e.g. Pinot Noir, my tastes don't seem to correlate with prices. (This is also true, with me, for whiskey and absinthe.) [1] http://optionalreading.blogspot.com/2012/12/laws-of-price-prices-are-set-at-margin.html http://optionalreading.blogspot.com/2012/12/laws-of-price-pr...
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- nosequel 9y agoSo he spends all his money making the facility and doesn't even bother building it in the Willamette Valley in Oregon? WV soil makes way better Pinot Noir than anywhere in California. All the tech in the world isn't going to turn good grapes into great grapes. Typical tech billionaire, trying to solve a problem that doesn't exist and completely missing the basics.
- te_chris 9y agoAnd gets fleeced by a few enterprising consultants along the way I'm sure. A fool and his money and all that.
- mmmpop 9y agoI would, however, support the idea of space wine. Grape vines enjoy tough conditions right? What's tougher than ISS? ~~space terroir~~
- rhcom2 9y agoYour post sent me down a long hole about plants in space. The ISS has grown romanian lettuce to eat and even a sunflower [1]. 1: https://blogs.nasa.gov/letters/2012/06/29/post_1340814534271/ https://blogs.nasa.gov/letters/2012/06/29/post_1340814534271...
- ralfd 9y agoAccording to the picture that was a sorry wilted sunflower.
- malchow 9y agoYou're crazy. Higher altitudes and steep slopes in California work very well for Pinot Noir. Pinot planted on flatland in the valleys, however, I would indeed leave alone.
- Mikeb85 9y agoMaybe, can't say I've ever had a PN from California that stacks up to the WV or Burgundy though.
- kqr2 9y agoFrom http://www.cbsnews.com/news/how-to-make-a-small-fortune/ http://www.cbsnews.com/news/how-to-make-a-small-fortune/ : How do you make a small fortune? Start with a large fortune and then open a winery.
- rjbrock 9y agoIve heard something similar from Richard Branson about airlines. "How do you become a millionaire? Start with a billion dollars and create an airline"
- mmmpop 9y agoWatch out Napa, this one Tech Millionaire is Disrupting the Wine Industry
- DrScump 9y ago... using this one weird trick!"
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- RichardCA 9y agoThe article didn't mention anything about why he thinks the SC mountains are good for Pinot. There's a lot of misinformation and lack of detailed journalism out there, in particular regarding how global warming will affect the varietals that are picky about temperature and soil conditions. http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/future_tense/2014/12/wine_and_climate_change_pinot_noir_is_the_vintner_s_polar_bear.html http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/future_tense/2014/1...
- syphilis2 9y agoSounds like an expensive lesson in wine and perfection.
- owebmaster 9y agoIt is funny how everybody goes crazy when talking about taxes and politicians taking our money and when CEOs do a lot worse with the extra money they take from us in the form of profit it becomes a BBC business news. Taxes > Profit
- 8ytecoder 9y agoThe difference is I can shun a company making unfair profit and choose a competitor (in most cases at least) but I can't not pay taxes for any reason (even civil disobedience is hard to prove). In general, any company/institution where I voluntarily part with money will, and has to, have lower regulations (not zero) than an institution where I don't have a choice.
- owebmaster 9y ago> The difference is I can shun a company making unfair profit and choose a competitor You could but most of the times the companies become so huge they finance laws that turn the state part of their profit, a huge part of it coming from taxes (or lack of) too.
- burkaman 9y ago"take from us in the form of profit" doesn't really make sense, unless you're talking about healthcare or some other absolute essential.
- MrGando 9y agoArticle doesn't even talk about yeast. The whole thing sounds close to a factory to me, apparently the guy hasn't even worked with vignerons in France at all. Unlikely to happen.
- Animats 9y agoAw. I thought the article was about how someone was going to synthesize better wine in bulk, like the "Wine 2.0" startup in Dogpatch.[1] They do well in blind tastings. Synthetic meat is hard. But wine is just a liquid mixture. [1] https://www.avawinery.com/ https://www.avawinery.com/
- petra 9y agoI'm curious, let's say these guys sucseed, and they partially, or fully commoditize wine via synthetics. What happens then? will it really replace most wine production ? or is wine one of those things that people will just pay a lot more for "authenticity" ?
- bllguo 9y agoDefinitely, seems to me a lot of people buy wine just to show it off, so there's no way wine production will be replaced completely. Especially high-end wines. Wine is a luxury good.
- SmellTheGlove 9y agoWhy try to make "the best" version of something that is judged by purely subjective standards? Make something very good, and some people will consider it to be the best. Those become your best (heh) customers.
- hkmurakami 9y agoHaha of course it's TJ Rogers. I still remember hearing he got in a bit of a scuffle with Los Gatos when he decided to use dynamite to blow a hole in the side of a hill to make his wine cellar.
- dejv 9y agoWell, there is no thing such as best wine. You can create most expensive wine or most scarce wine, but there is nothing like best wine, like there is no the best painting in the world.
- azinman2 9y agoI came in to make the same comment. It’s all a matter of taste, and even then you’d want variety. No one wants to eat the same thing every day, even if it started out as the best meal of your life.
- ralfd 9y ago> A collapse in the roof of a gigantic tunnel being driven into a hillside sounds like a pretty dramatic event. But the entrepreneur TJ Rodgers is calm as he recalls what happened. "It's not like you see in the movies with rocks flying, and stuff like that. "It will kill you but it's kind of a slow motion thing, and you can walk [away] and stay in front of it," he explains. I found this really interesting! A cave in is a small motion thing which you can walk away from.