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It bears pointing out there are skeptics around the entire concept of wine tasting: "even trained, professional palates are terrible at judging wine"[1] let alo

It bears pointing out there are skeptics around the entire concept of wine tasting: "even trained, professional palates are terrible at judging wine"[1] let alone everybody else. My takeaway is drink whatever you enjoy and ignore the price, the label, and the snobs. 1. https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2013/jun/23/wine-tasting-junk-science-analysis https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2013/jun/23/wine-ta...

dllthomas 4y ago
Most of us can't afford to ignore the price!
- brewdad 4y ago
  It's less ignore the price than understand that, like most luxury goods, higher price doesn't necessarily mean better. Any wine under $10 is going to be basic, get you tipsy stuff that, hopefully, isn't offensive to your palate. There are a lot of really good wines in the $15-25 range that represent what most people should be drinking most of the time. By the time you reach $40+, you are paying for marketing or very subtle differences in quality that most drinkers won't appreciate, especially outside of a very controlled environment of temperature and food pairings. *all prices US and may vary by your specific location and wine shop.
  - cycrutchfield 4y ago
    This is somewhat of a simplification. The wine $40+ is also likely to mature into something more interesting over time, which the $15 wine likely will not. You are partly paying for future appreciation in quality. Of course the vast majority of wine drinkers just guzzle the bottle as soon as they come home from the store, so I can see why one might come to the conclusion that wine $40+ isn’t worth the price.
cycrutchfield 4y ago
It bears pointing out that all such studies that have been conducted have super questionable methodologies and therefore questionable conclusions. There is a strong publication bias for surprising conclusions like “all wine experts are frauds” and essentially no bias for publishing something mundane like “people who train explicitly for blind tasting are… actually good at blind tasting”. My suggestion is go and participate in a blind tasting with an actual expert (a MW or Master Somm), and draw your own conclusions about whether it is a parlor trick or not.
- lemming 4y ago
  I (sort of) did this - about 10 years ago or so we ate at Dans Le Noir (https://www.danslenoir.com/en/ https://www.danslenoir.com/en/, we went to the one in Barcelona), a restaurant which serves everything in pitch darkness. The waiters were all blind. It was a really interesting experience in many ways. Everyone sits at communal tables, so you get to chat to everyone around you. There was a guy at our table who worked in the Spanish wine industry - I can't recall if he was a sommelier or waiter, but his knowledge of wine was clearly much better than anyone else at the table. When they served the wines with the different courses they didn't tell us anything about them. No-one at the table, including him, did better than chance at even just guessing whether the wines were red or white. It's possible they deliberately chose ambiguous wines to make it more difficult, but it was really amazing how hard it was to tell what you were eating or drinking when you couldn't see it. I didn't draw conclusions about whether anything was a parlour trick, but it was an illuminating illustration of how much we kid ourselves if we think our senses are really communicating accurately with us.
  - cycrutchfield 4y ago
    This is the difference between “person who knows stuff about wine” and “person who trains blind tasting”. The former can rattle off obscure facts but can’t tell the difference between a red and white wine without seeing it. The latter knows how to detect the level of tannins in a wine and is able to deduce that the wine without tannins is a white wine. I suspect your acquaintance may have been in the former camp.
    - lemming 4y ago
      If you have to explicitly train to be able to tell the difference between a red and a white without seeing it, surely that does mean that 99.99% of what is written about wine is bullshit? It's really hard not to come to an emperor-has-no-clothes conclusion here.
      - cycrutchfield 4y ago
        I bet you’re also the kind of person that says modern art is roughly equivalent to children’s fingerpainting, therefore the “emperor has no clothes”. Just because you don’t understand why two things are different doesn’t mean that there is no difference. It just means you are uneducated.
bsder 4y ago
There is a difference in the phrase "judging wine" here: 1) "I can identify from the wines you have previously liked that you are likely to like this particular wine that I have personally tasted." If you find someone good, this is generally not bullshit. They are incredibly useful. And they will probably like you very much if you just be very honest about what you like. Sadly, only two wine buyers I have ever known who were this good. This is like having a friend who has a house full of CDs or records that he listens to all the time. If you tell him "I like X, Y and Z" he can tell you "You will almost certainly like Q, and you should take a flyer and give V a try even though you might not like them." 2) "If you give me a food, I can pair wines with it that will complement the flavors". Really good sommeliers can do this and it is not bullshit. This is the first category with a lot of experience tasting foods and wines together. And, like all humans, sometimes they get it wrong. My most fascinating conversations with sommeliers have been when I didn't like a pairing, and I made polite comments about it (for example: "I liked the pairings of the first and third courses, but the second course wine, which was fine by itself, really wasn't to my taste with the food. My wife liked the second and third pairings, but wasn't a fan of the first."). Be forewarned: if the sommelier has the time and latitude, you are likely to get interrogated if you show some interest. CAUTION: You may also wind up drinking far more wine than you expect. 3) "I can identify a Chateau Lafite Rothschild 2010 Pauillac Premier Grand Cru Classe from a glass." This is where the giant heaping mounds of bullshit enter. Unless a wine has a very unique flavor profile that makes it stick out from wines in general, they're not going to be very distinguishable from other similar wines of similar class. And, you know what, it doesn't matter. Your palate may not even like that very expensive bottle of wine. So be it. At the end of it all: drink some wine you are likely to enjoy. Most of the time it will be pleasant. Sometimes it will be a miss. Now and then it will be superb. Relish the moment.
- cycrutchfield 4y ago
  #3 is the parlor trick, and nobody seriously into blind tasting will claim that they can do this reliably. On the other hand, they will be able to taste a wine blind and list out its objective qualities such as acidity, tannins, alcohol level, aromatic markers, etc. These will generally be quite accurate. From these one can deduce varietal, approximate age, quality level, region, etc. Naming the specific vintage or appellation is doable, but requires a lot of knowledge of vintages worldwide and a lot of guesswork. Anything beyond that is probably bullshit as you say.
denkmoon 4y ago
True, but it has also been shown that higher price improves perceived taste experience. It's all in your head, but isn't everything?

dllthomas 4y ago

Most of us can't afford to ignore the price!

brewdad 4y ago
It's less ignore the price than understand that, like most luxury goods, higher price doesn't necessarily mean better. Any wine under $10 is going to be basic, get you tipsy stuff that, hopefully, isn't offensive to your palate. There are a lot of really good wines in the $15-25 range that represent what most people should be drinking most of the time. By the time you reach $40+, you are paying for marketing or very subtle differences in quality that most drinkers won't appreciate, especially outside of a very controlled environment of temperature and food pairings. *all prices US and may vary by your specific location and wine shop.
- cycrutchfield 4y ago
  This is somewhat of a simplification. The wine $40+ is also likely to mature into something more interesting over time, which the $15 wine likely will not. You are partly paying for future appreciation in quality. Of course the vast majority of wine drinkers just guzzle the bottle as soon as they come home from the store, so I can see why one might come to the conclusion that wine $40+ isn’t worth the price.

cycrutchfield 4y ago

It bears pointing out that all such studies that have been conducted have super questionable methodologies and therefore questionable conclusions. There is a strong publication bias for surprising conclusions like “all wine experts are frauds” and essentially no bias for publishing something mundane like “people who train explicitly for blind tasting are… actually good at blind tasting”. My suggestion is go and participate in a blind tasting with an actual expert (a MW or Master Somm), and draw your own conclusions about whether it is a parlor trick or not.

lemming 4y ago
I (sort of) did this - about 10 years ago or so we ate at Dans Le Noir (https://www.danslenoir.com/en/ https://www.danslenoir.com/en/, we went to the one in Barcelona), a restaurant which serves everything in pitch darkness. The waiters were all blind. It was a really interesting experience in many ways. Everyone sits at communal tables, so you get to chat to everyone around you. There was a guy at our table who worked in the Spanish wine industry - I can't recall if he was a sommelier or waiter, but his knowledge of wine was clearly much better than anyone else at the table. When they served the wines with the different courses they didn't tell us anything about them. No-one at the table, including him, did better than chance at even just guessing whether the wines were red or white. It's possible they deliberately chose ambiguous wines to make it more difficult, but it was really amazing how hard it was to tell what you were eating or drinking when you couldn't see it. I didn't draw conclusions about whether anything was a parlour trick, but it was an illuminating illustration of how much we kid ourselves if we think our senses are really communicating accurately with us.
- cycrutchfield 4y ago
  This is the difference between “person who knows stuff about wine” and “person who trains blind tasting”. The former can rattle off obscure facts but can’t tell the difference between a red and white wine without seeing it. The latter knows how to detect the level of tannins in a wine and is able to deduce that the wine without tannins is a white wine. I suspect your acquaintance may have been in the former camp.
  - lemming 4y ago
    If you have to explicitly train to be able to tell the difference between a red and a white without seeing it, surely that does mean that 99.99% of what is written about wine is bullshit? It's really hard not to come to an emperor-has-no-clothes conclusion here.
    - cycrutchfield 4y ago
      I bet you’re also the kind of person that says modern art is roughly equivalent to children’s fingerpainting, therefore the “emperor has no clothes”. Just because you don’t understand why two things are different doesn’t mean that there is no difference. It just means you are uneducated.

bsder 4y ago

There is a difference in the phrase "judging wine" here: 1) "I can identify from the wines you have previously liked that you are likely to like this particular wine that I have personally tasted." If you find someone good, this is generally not bullshit. They are incredibly useful. And they will probably like you very much if you just be very honest about what you like. Sadly, only two wine buyers I have ever known who were this good. This is like having a friend who has a house full of CDs or records that he listens to all the time. If you tell him "I like X, Y and Z" he can tell you "You will almost certainly like Q, and you should take a flyer and give V a try even though you might not like them." 2) "If you give me a food, I can pair wines with it that will complement the flavors". Really good sommeliers can do this and it is not bullshit. This is the first category with a lot of experience tasting foods and wines together. And, like all humans, sometimes they get it wrong. My most fascinating conversations with sommeliers have been when I didn't like a pairing, and I made polite comments about it (for example: "I liked the pairings of the first and third courses, but the second course wine, which was fine by itself, really wasn't to my taste with the food. My wife liked the second and third pairings, but wasn't a fan of the first."). Be forewarned: if the sommelier has the time and latitude, you are likely to get interrogated if you show some interest. CAUTION: You may also wind up drinking far more wine than you expect. 3) "I can identify a Chateau Lafite Rothschild 2010 Pauillac Premier Grand Cru Classe from a glass." This is where the giant heaping mounds of bullshit enter. Unless a wine has a very unique flavor profile that makes it stick out from wines in general, they're not going to be very distinguishable from other similar wines of similar class. And, you know what, it doesn't matter. Your palate may not even like that very expensive bottle of wine. So be it. At the end of it all: drink some wine you are likely to enjoy. Most of the time it will be pleasant. Sometimes it will be a miss. Now and then it will be superb. Relish the moment.

cycrutchfield 4y ago
#3 is the parlor trick, and nobody seriously into blind tasting will claim that they can do this reliably. On the other hand, they will be able to taste a wine blind and list out its objective qualities such as acidity, tannins, alcohol level, aromatic markers, etc. These will generally be quite accurate. From these one can deduce varietal, approximate age, quality level, region, etc. Naming the specific vintage or appellation is doable, but requires a lot of knowledge of vintages worldwide and a lot of guesswork. Anything beyond that is probably bullshit as you say.

denkmoon 4y ago

True, but it has also been shown that higher price improves perceived taste experience. It's all in your head, but isn't everything?