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Is wine fake?

• heckelson 4y ago
  Even though wine snobbery might be fake, that shouldn't minder your enjoyment of wine! Drink what's tasty and have a good time enjoying wine together (or alone if that's your jam)!
• lkrubner 4y ago
  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"
  • gspencley 4y ago
    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.
    • p1necone 4y ago
      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.
      • bombcar 4y ago
        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 4y ago
          > 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 4y ago
            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/Carl%27s_Jr.#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hot_dog https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hot_dog
            • randomdata 4y ago
  • alvarezbjm-hn 4y ago
    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-CABERNET-SAUVIGNON-1-LT-560x560.jpg 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 4y ago
    >notes of blue I'm so stealing that
    • deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    • ineptech 4y ago
      It's a running joke in my circle to describe the taste of any expensive wine, beer or coffee as, "strident, yet insouciant."
      • metadat 4y ago
        Word of the day: Insouciant French adjective Translated definitions: Carefree, careless, reckless
      • devindotcom 4y ago
        The classic cartoon for this: https://i.pinimg.com/originals/05/80/42/058042c06780bbc0fa3acfb1829d3c16.jpg https://i.pinimg.com/originals/05/80/42/058042c06780bbc0fa3a...
  • hbrn 4y ago
    Maybe some of them were synesthetes?
  • Stratoscope 4y ago
    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.
    • nkrisc 4y ago
      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 4y ago
        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.
        • heckelson 4y ago
          I've also heard that if the coffee is too hot, the flavours don't come out completely (heard it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z-iNAyu-ejo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z-iNAyu-ejo), so maybe that plays into it too?
          • dahfizz 4y ago
            Yes, you definitely have to brew your coffee correctly. Honestly, I've found regular cheap coffee makers are acceptably good and consistent. They are designed to drip water that is the right temp. Where you have to be careful is when boiling the water yourself for a chemex or aeropress brew. Done right, those are better. But I can't be bothered most days.
  • twelvechairs 4y ago
    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.
  • m463 4y ago
    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 4y ago
      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 4y ago
    [deleted]
  • zasdffaa 4y ago
    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?
  • NoboruWataya 4y ago
    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 4y ago
      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.
    • poloniculmov 4y ago
      It's much easier to get subtle notes in cuppings than drinking brewed coffee, because the brewing method will skew the taste. You also need to train your palate, you obviously can recognise what tastes good to you, but most of us never actually worked on pinpointing those flavours. Unfortunately, some roaster embelish those notes to drive up sales, since it's the only to differentiate between coffees, especially if you're not familiar with that particular farm/region. Or, you can just ignore them and have fun :)) Coffee can be a rabbit whole where you can spend lots of money to get certain microlots or improving your water profile.
  • bitxbitxbitcoin 4y ago
    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 https://ganjier.com [1] https://thehighestcritic.com/reviews/cultivar-review-pleazure-by-wood-wide-farms/ https://thehighestcritic.com/reviews/cultivar-review-pleazur... [2] https://thehighestcritic.com/reviews/strain-review-melonade-by-north-country-pharms/ https://thehighestcritic.com/reviews/strain-review-melonade-...
  • rufus_foreman 4y ago
    "a hint of rotting grapes, notes of a bar fight"
    • rad_gruchalski 4y ago
      “a light scent of a vomit in the dumpster”
  • garrickvanburen 4y ago
    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.
  • jacobr1 4y ago
    There probably are objectively 4 categories of wine that pretty much everybody will agree with when given a blind test: bad - wine that actually has gone bad (skunked, turned to vinegar or some other faul) low-quality - jug wine (high sugar and/or extremely high acidity and/or strong ethanol flavor) average/meh - the wine is drinkable and nothing stands out good wine - the wine hits all the key traits of its varietal Those super-sensitive can get more fine grained, and anyone who doesn't hate wine will have a 5th "great" category based on their personal preferences. But those are replicable consistently across the population. The average/good distinction is trainable for the average person with some practice.
    • nephanth 4y ago
      I agree with your classification (you can add "high quantity of sulfites" to low-quality. Those taste like the headache you’re going to get on the next day.) Also while price doesn’t predict which category you are, it’s hard to find a very cheap good wine. You have to either know your stuff, or buy something more expensive
  • emmelaich 4y ago
    While I don't doubt your story, to really eliminate any chance of cheating you need Amazing Randi levels of procedure and knowledge.
  • erfgh 4y ago
    > Only afterwards were they told which wine they had tasted. Well that spoils the next tastings. You can remember what the expensive wines taste like and score them higher in the future.
  • almog 4y ago
    Were the interns present at the time the editors entered? In other words — was blind tasting or double-blind testing?
  • scelerat 4y ago
    > Having said that, I'll also mention, the way the editors struggled for new adjectives did sometimes make me laugh Dancing about architecture
• noodlesUK 4y ago
  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 4y ago
    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.
    • namdnay 4y ago
      > 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
    • fullshark 4y ago
      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 4y ago
        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.
• JoeAltmaier 4y ago
  If it takes a super-taster to tell the difference, then I'm safe paying for $6 Chuck
  • Enginerrrd 4y ago
    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.
• e10jc 4y ago
  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 4y ago
    Probably difficult and expensive to consistently burn the field down.
    • preinheimer 4y ago
      Maybe happening more often with the wildfires these days
    • hoherd 4y ago
      That's what we have PG&E for: Peaty Grapes and Ethanol.
  • jahsome 4y ago
    You may find you like peaty single malt scotches.
    • bergenty 4y ago
      I once asked for a very smoky whisky and was bought out something completely clear.
      • tptacek 4y ago
        There's a bunch of pale straw colored Islays (Ardbeg comes to mind). "Completely clear" would throw me off a bit, but very light? Sure.
        • bergenty 4y ago
• argc 4y ago
  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 4y ago
  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 4y ago
    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 4y ago
    Text editor choice. Those are definitely, completely, for sure real.
    • bombcar 4y ago
      There are zero subjective calls there, however. My choices are objectively correct and laid down by God Himself, all others are ontologically evil.
      • voxelghost 4y ago
        >My choices are objectively correct and laid down by God Himself, all others are ontologically evil. Hello fellow spaces over tabs person
        • iso1631 4y ago
          spaces at the start of the line, tabs between function arguments
    • Tepix 4y ago
      If i use Visual Studio but with vim keybindings, am i faking it? ;-)
  • tptacek 4y ago
    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?)
• Havoc 4y ago
  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 4y ago
  All I know about wine is that it comes in a box.
  • Cupertino95014 4y ago
    Not true. Sometimes it's in a bottle with a screw cap.
    • fragmede 4y ago
      Everyone knows the good stuff comes in cans.
  • rosnd 4y ago
    A large plastic jug, actually.
• wolframhempel 4y ago
  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 4y ago
    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.
• deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
• sbf501 4y ago
  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 4y ago
    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 4y ago
  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 4y ago
    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 4y ago
      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.
    • mauvehaus 4y ago
      I once found myself at a fast food joint where there was a self serve fountain with Diet Coke in the regular Coke dispenser. I hesitantly asked if that was the case and the counter person cheerfully admitted that they'd run out of regular Coke and figured nobody would notice the substitution. I regret not asking how many people had, in fact, noticed and inquired.
      • bombcar 4y ago
        I think people who regularly drink Coke might not notice the difference right away but for someone who drinks diet drinks, regular coke tastes like straight syrup now.
• dehrmann 4y ago
  > 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.
• JimRoepcke 4y ago
  I mean sure it runs Windows binaries on Linux, but calling it fake is a bit harsh.
  • kleiba 4y ago
    Glad to see I'm not the only one who first thought of WineHQ when they read the headline.
• Barrin92 4y ago
  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.
  • jojobas 4y ago
    Done that too. Scorecards could be sold to random number vendors. It looks like modern quality control leaves no such thing as "shitty wine" at all.
• 13415 4y ago
  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 4y ago
    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 4y ago
      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 4y ago
  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.
• stephc_int13 4y ago
  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.
• antognini 4y ago
  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 4y ago
    > "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".
  • 2devnull 4y ago
    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.
    • noughtme 4y ago
      > Some flaws, like Bret I cannot wait for the current trend of brettanomyces contaminated "natural" wines to die.
      • 4y ago
• forgotusername6 4y ago
  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.
• blindriver 4y ago
  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.
• anononaut 4y ago
  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.
  • tptacek 4y ago
    It depends on what "true" means. That there are diminishing returns to investments over a threshold? That's probably true of all these luxury goods. Past a certain point in whiskey, you're not necessarily paying for "better" so much as chasing some interesting distinction (a particular sherry note, an especially punchy cereal flavor in a high-proof bottling, &c). In each category of whiskey, there is a satisficing price point, and serious whiskey drinkers would (perhaps unlike wine drinkers) pretty uniformly tell you not to depart that price point without a good reason to.
• pbreit 4y ago
  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 4y ago
    I thought this was a well established fact.
    • pbreit 4y ago
      I've never seen it suggested.
• bergenty 4y ago
  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.
  • civilized 4y ago
    > Blind testers can’t tell the difference According to the article, this result comes from a study that used inexperienced undergrads, and those who have passed more rigorous training protocols perform better.
• lisper 4y ago
  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.
  • SergeAx 4y ago
    > Low-production wines that have an affluent following cost more because supply and demand. Champagne region produces some astonishing volume of sparkling wine, like hundreds of millions of bottles per year. Any given bottle of sparkling from Champagne costs approx. 2 times more than cremant of the same quality.
  • doublepg23 4y ago
    > the ability to take someone's description of what they like and match it to what's on their wine list Absolutely, I worked in a wine store for years and it was always awesome having a customer come back and buy more bottles of something I recommended. > What there is not, however, is any kind of absolute standard for what constitutes a "good" wine. Different people like different things. This is me with Eastern U.S. wines. I understand that conventional wisdom poo-poos Vitis labrusca (even though it saved European wine!) but I do love foxy wines from that region.
  • devindotcom 4y ago
    My dad tells the story of how he went to a shop to pick up some wine when they were being economical, and was in the "value" section. A wino of the classic type approached and pointed out the (I believe it was) Franzia. "That's the good stuff," he said, then added confidentially: "...doesn't give you the shakes." My dad bought the box and many more over the years. Never got the shakes. Quality is relative!
• w_for_wumbo 4y ago
  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.
• femto 4y ago
  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 4y ago
    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 4y ago
    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.
• gdubs 4y ago
  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 Rosé, 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.
• AlbertCory 4y ago
  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 4y ago
  > 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 £8) definitely increases the chance of getting a nice bottle, but it doesn't guarantee it. But that effect is only true up to maybe £15 at the most. Above that you're throwing money away.
• bsder 4y ago
  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.
  • Sohcahtoa82 4y ago
    I've also heard that Pepsi is sweeter than Coke, and that after the initial swig, some people that at first said they liked the Pepsi more were turned off by the sweetness.
• fleddr 4y ago
  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.
• etempleton 4y ago
  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 4y ago
    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.
    • etempleton 4y ago
      This is all true, but much of the variation can be controlled with modern techniques and careful monitoring. Not magic, science. Again, this has a cost, so it is not that it has no value, but it does not justify a 400% - 1000% markup.
      • BlueTemplar 4y ago
        The magic (trick) comes from making people believe that it does ?
  • randerson 4y ago
    It's not just grapes. Many wines technically aren't even vegan. Not uncommon for gelatin, egg whites, milk, or fish bladders and many other additives to be used in achieving the desired taste and color before the wine is filtered.
    • hnfong 4y ago
• drbeast 4y ago
  Yes, wine is fake just like the moon landing, vaccine efficacy, and the election /s Sorry I couldn't help myself!
• rfrey 4y ago
  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.
  • Sohcahtoa82 4y ago
    > but I snuck in some Gato Negro from Chile, then made sure everyone knew when that was the CEO's favourite. I'm missing something. What made this a big faux pax?
    • AdamTReineke 4y ago
      It looks like it's a $5 bottle of wine, which would make the CEO's taste appear cheap despite the reputation as a connoisseur.
• pas 4y ago
  > In 2001 Frédérick 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!
  • rfrey 4y ago
    The language was proscribed, the tasters (surprise! students from the University) were asked to apply them to the wines. Of course they put the "red wine" words to the "red" wine.
• erehweb 4y ago
  If you are interested in this topic, you may find the book "Gulp" interesting. https://maryroach.net/gulp.html https://maryroach.net/gulp.html The writer talks about wine and olive oil tasting, among other things.
• majormajor 4y ago
  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 4y ago
    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.
  • s1artibartfast 4y ago
    I think it is a breath of fresh air to read something thoughtfully put together. If you just care about the bottom line, yeah there isn't anything shocking. Wine is real. If you want to learn about some of the details, then this has substance. I certainly wasn't familiar with the studies mentioned and their data. Did you know that 11/13 experts could identify the varietal and country of origin for a French Gamay? IMHO, the content is vastly better than articles and threads with people squabbling about the latest thing Elon said on twitter.
• _8j50 4y ago
  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 4y ago
  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 4y ago
  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 4y ago
  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.
  • calny 4y ago
    Same. This fooled me, as I was reading quickly and missed the duplications. Interestingly, I felt something was off but didn’t think anything of it except maybe “my eyes might be getting tired.” Consciousness/cognition as a prediction machine, and the the resulting cognitive biases and tricks, are fascinating.
    • BlueTemplar 4y ago
      The point is more that (unless maybe if you just learned reading), you just aren't going to notice it.
• 78124781 4y ago
  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.
• jacobsenscott 4y ago
  > 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.
  • MarkMarine 4y ago
    Everyone's taste is so different. I've found usually what makes the most difference for me is the wood barrels used to age the wine, and how much time they spend in those barrels. The good barrels are expensive, so the wines are usually more expensive. My friends don't share the same taste, and I wine that I absolutely love is just not their favorite. I've also found a ton of variation in wines among bottles. I have a relatively cheap bottle I really like that is at the local grocery, and some have that great flavor that I really appreciate, and some are just blah. I've seen the same thing wine tasting, I have a wine I love and I bring the bottle home and it's sometimes not the same. I've kind of narrowed it down to spending time in the trunk of the car while I drive home in 100deg F temps. Now I bring a cooler with me to keep the wine at the cellar temp, but if you ask anyone who knows about wine they would say I'm being ridiculous. A wine fridge isn't required, a short time of the wine getting warm doesn't "damage" the wine, but I swear I can taste the difference. Maybe it's just luck, I've never A/B tested it.
• LastTrain 4y ago
  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?
• fumeux_fume 4y ago
  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+.
• deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
• jsbg 4y ago
  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 4y ago
  "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?
• ketaaboo26 4y ago
• rdevsrex 4y ago
  I'm surprised that no one talks about how a certain wine makes you feel. Ever since I started partaking in cannabis, I've noticed that many of the labels describe the effects you are likely to experience. Granted, wines aren't so different to reliably reproduce physical and mental effects, but maybe it's a new angle for marketing :)
  • randerson 4y ago
    I would love wine reviews where the reviewer drinks 3 glasses and then reviews how they feel the next morning. Wines use all sorts of additives to achieve their taste. Some wines leave me feeling worse the next day than others.
• gt565k 4y ago
  I've had some bad luck multiple times buying expensive wine that was on sale. i.e. mark down from $50-60 to $20-30... 2/3 times it was skunked. Better off buying that $12-$15 bottle or getting the kirkland costco $8-10 bottles. Never had a bad one from those and they taste decent.
• giantg2 4y ago
  My wine is not fake. I make it myself. As it says on the label - It ain't fine wine, but after 2 glasses you'll think it is.
• bcrosby95 4y ago
  The best bottle of wine I've ever had was an $8 pinot noir. My friends and I like wine and, at that point in my life, we went wine tasting pretty regularly. One weekend we all instantly loved one of the wines. We found out they were trying to clear out old inventory, and were selling it for $8 each. We bought the rest of their supply (about 2 cases) and split it among the 4 of us.
• fnordpiglet 4y ago
  Have you never wondered why I drink only distilled water, or rainwater, and only pure-grain alcohol?
  • BlueTemplar 4y ago
    Those fluorine round notes though...
  • Tepix 4y ago
    Rainwater is considered a health hazard these days. https://news.northeastern.edu/2022/08/10/forever-chemicals-rainwater-pfas/ https://news.northeastern.edu/2022/08/10/forever-chemicals-r...
• hn_throwaway_99 4y ago
  Two scientific points to bring up about this article: 1. When the author talks about Coke vs. Pepsi, he comes to the conclusion that the reason people prefer Pepsi in blind taste tests but Coke in unblinded ones is "Think of it as the brain combining two sources of input to make a final taste perception: the actual taste of the two sodas and a preconceived notion (probably based on great marketing) that Coke should taste better." I've read elsewhere, though, that the reason for this difference is actually because of the difference between "sip tests" vs. "drinking tests". Pepsi is objectively sweeter than Coke, so if you're just taking a few quick sips (as most taste tests are set up), you may prefer the sweeter taste of Pepsi because it stands out more, but if you're drinking a whole bunch, the sweeter taste of Pepsi can feel cloying. 2. The article includes this quote, "the correlation between price and overall rating is small and negative, suggesting that individuals on average enjoy more expensive wines slightly less." I wonder if this could be due to Berkon's paradox, a statistical paradox that was on the HN front page yesterday, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33677781 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33677781. After all, I'm guessing most truly bad wines may not be rated at all.
  • chrisseaton 4y ago
    A joke in the UK is that the unofficial slogan of Pepsi is 'yeah fine whatever mate' because when you order Coca-Cola in a pub and they (for some reason) stock Pepsi instead they always have to ask 'is Pepsi ok?'.
    • jeffrallen 4y ago
      That shit is so vile, the response should be, "yeah, nah, I'll take a cider".
      • 8n4vidtmkvmk 4y ago
        is it? i used to not care but now it'll give me pause. might just stick with water over pepsi
  • googlryas 4y ago
• SergeAx 4y ago
  I am a wine enthusiast for about 10 years. On an average week I am tasting 2-3 wines. I can definitely tell good wine from bad and more or less guess grape variety and geography in blind tasting. Saying all that, I am mostly buying wines in $20-$30 price range, because most of the times I can't tell difference between good $20 and good $50 wine in blind tasting. I strongly beleive that $100+ wines are nothing but a marketing, except really old (30+ years) vintages. Those are just pricing for their rarity, not their taste, and mostly used as an expensive presents. There are also things like favorite regions (mine is Tuscany and South Italy), vintages (2006 and 2010 in Italy were mostly golden, 2016 is very promising) and innumerable hacks like buying wine across the road from that prestigious chateaus and terroirs, or tasting non-Champagne sparkling from France - same quality for half the price. It's funny and tasty game, I like it.
• Grustaf 4y ago
  I don't even know how to process this. It doesn't jibe with my experience at all. Obviously almost anyone can tell the difference between red and white wine, they are completely dissimilar, like orange juice and apple juice. It's very hard to believe that anyone that had both will confuse them. And even I, who have no expertise at all, no real interest even, can mostly tell if a wine is from France or Italy for example, and most of the time if it's cheap or not.
• ketaaboo26 4y ago
• jboy55 4y ago
  A long time ago, I was on one of my first business trips with an older colleague. We were staying at a rather nice hotel, and it had a really nice bar with an extensive collection of liquor. We noticed some bottles that looked really old, and looked through the huge wine/liquor menu to find them. What we found was they were Armagnac, and the oldest bottle was from the 1800s and it was $350 a glass. Coincidentally our rooms cost $350 a night. What if, we thought, we each bought a glass, and made sure that was our only purchase at the bar, and put that on our room account. We could fudge the dates, and put an extra day stay. My colleague said he knew the payroll woman and this probably would work. First problem though, we had no idea what Armagnac tasted like, how could we tell if it was good if we had never tried it before? At this time the bartender came by and asked what we wanted. We thought, lets order a 'good' one and pay cash, then we order the fancy one for the room. So we asked him for a 'good one'. He poured us one and showed us the bottle, then left. We looked into the book for it, and found it was $40 a glass. Well whisky was around $4, and Jack was like $5, for comparison. That was fairly pricey at the time for our own cash, we weren't that well paid, but we did say a good one. We smelled and tasted it. It smelled good, and it was so smooth. We savored it. The bartender came back, asked, "How is it?". We said, "Its really good, but... $40 a glass? I know we said a good one but ...". Bartender stood back, "I would never do that to you sirs!". Punched the drink into the computer, it was $4, same as well drinks. Honestly, the next sip I took was harsh, and had a bad aftertaste. It completely changed just knowing it was the same price as the cheapest swill you could get. Now the bartender could have given us a discount, but what it meant for us was that the $350 one was a waste of effort. We would have no idea if it was good or not.
• tqi 4y ago
  It's interesting to me that the focus of this question is whether or not Wine experts are full shit or not. I have no trouble believing that with all the differences in inputs and technique, the final products would have material differences, and that some individuals are able to distinguish the difference. More interesting to me is whether with enough experience I (or most people) can develop into one of those people - ie whether it is more akin to learning to read or learning to dunk.
• Narkov 4y ago
  Maybe this supports the articles theory, but I feel wine is more of an experience more than just the chemical composition of the drink. After all, wine isn't consumed just for it's nutritional content. You can get a good story from a bottle of wine - particularly around the vintage. Things like weather conditions in the years leading up to the pick and then right at the pick, volume of grapes and maturation method.
• DrNosferatu 4y ago
  Once buying wine at a specialist shop in Austria, I got to do a blind test of Austria vs. Portugal reds, and I clearly could discern the delicious Portuguese Dão ;)
• Ensorceled 4y ago
  Saturday night I ordered a Tempranillo and my wife ordered a Cabernet Sauvignon, I knew the glasses had been switched by smell. I can usually tell the difference between a $10 bottle of wine and a $30 (CDN). If I couldn't, I would buy the $10 wine by the case. I would unlikely be able to tell a $30 cab from a $100 cab and would probably prefer the $30 one. I don't think I am unusual or extraordinary in this sense.
• TheGoodBarn 4y ago
  I don't care about wine, but the website is very pretty. I like the progress indicator on the left side.
• _yb2s 4y ago
  I don't like wine, or know anything about it, but I once was invited to a blind wine tasting party at a ritzy yacht club. So, of course I searched around for the absolute cheapest bottle I could find, it cost me $0.99. It was voted #2 out of a dozen very expensive wines. My conclusion is that wine prices are certainly fake. Maybe there are good and bad wines, but you can certainly get a top notch bottle of wine for a dollar.
• deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
• exabrial 4y ago
  Wine tasting is exactly like bicycle saddles. Like saddles even have tiers, $20, $75, $150, $300, $500+. Sometimes, when you spend more money, you get a better product, but it might not fit your ass (technically your sit bones, but I digress). Because human physiology differs greatly between people, you really do have to try a bunch of bike saddles to find the correct one that works for you . This can be a time-consuming and expensive process. In in an attempt to narrow down the correct answer, you might look up some reviews online. But in the end, it really comes down to what you like and there are no shortcuts.
• docandrew 4y ago
  I went to dinner with my dad and a coworker of his when I was a quite a bit younger. The coworker suggested a bottle of _very_ expensive champagne that he and his wife had enjoyed together before. It was very nice, and I said something like, “my limited experience with champagne probably doesn’t give me the proper appreciation for this.” He said “Nonsense. If it tastes good to you, then it’s a good champagne, period.” That’s kind of been my motto for food and drink ever since. Regardless of price, some things are just going to please you more than others, so enjoy them.
• munificent 4y ago
  > Judges were most consistent at the bottom of the range—they always agreed terrible wines were terrible—and least consistent near the top. A hypothesis to explain this: We've evolved a detailed sense of taste to help us distinguish harmful food (spoiled, inedible, etc.) from safe food. That would suggest that our sense of taste is most heavily calibrated to detect bad flavors since those are the actionable danger signals that tell us to spit something out. Part of something tasting good is simply the absence of off-putting bad flavors. Then, once those are out of the way, you can have more interesting but subtle nuances that elevate it to something much better. I suspect that it's easier to reach agreement on bad wine (or bad food of any category) because it's likely bad because of the presence of one or more wrong notes that most of us are sensitive to and dislike. Once you've eliminated all of those, you have a wine that's good but perhaps undifferentiated. To go beyond that, though, you quickly enter the realm of personal preference. Because any flavor component that doesn't signal danger is equally as valid as any other and it may be mostly up to memory associations or other mostly arbitrary preferences.
• ecommerceguy 4y ago
  Don't care what this person says Austin Hope is f'ing good stuff.
• WheelsAtLarge 4y ago
  Ten years ago I spoke to a winemaker whose goal was to match the test of a certain top level price winning wine. She said that they did chemical analysis and never ending taste tests. She said that she was not the only one. They thought that low price wines should eventually taste just as good as any of the super expensive ones. Even then it was hard to tell the difference. She pointed out that the different types of wines would eventually taste very similar to the point that most people would not be able to tell the difference. The price she was aiming for was less than $20 per bottle. I suspect that very bad wine is very evident but good wines are very hard to identify by taste since they are very similar in taste. The only difference is the bottle and the price. Wine is like any other consumer product. People pay for the brand and the utility. But brand is the big price differentiator.
• gravelc 4y ago
  My absolute favourite wine in the world is less than AU$30 a bottle - every vintage is spectacular. The winemaker wants ordinary people to drink his wines, so this is the price he sets. They are accordingly very difficult to buy - cellar door opens for just 2 weekends a year and supply is very limited. I’d back virtually anyone who likes this style to genuinely enjoy it, without knowing anything about its provenance. I’ve tasted wines 10x or 20x the price, and they really are no better. They likely cost exactly the same to make, but their price is impacted by demand. In general, I think most people can tell a $10 bottle from a $30 bottle. I suspect very very few could reliably pick a $300 bottle from a $30 bottle.
  • chris1993 4y ago
    and what is this favourite wine?
• pbj1968 4y ago
  The movie Somm was one of the funniest unintentional comedies I’ve ever seen. Just fake it til you make it, apparently. If you fail, simply keep retesting. Drink what you like. :)
• zetazzed 4y ago
  Is housing fake? Most people can tell a $100k house from a $700k house, but there are exceptions. For instance, viewers who are not experts in the San Francisco Bay Area region of housing often could not tell whether this house (https://www.redfin.com/CA/San-Francisco/261-Minerva-St-94112/home/1134253 https://www.redfin.com/CA/San-Francisco/261-Minerva-St-94112...) or this house (https://www.redfin.com/TX/San-Antonio/4924-Appleseed-Ct-78238/home/48714149 https://www.redfin.com/TX/San-Antonio/4924-Appleseed-Ct-7823...) is the most expensive option. Some commentators claim that certain housing experts have "preferences" (or "things they like"), but several studies that concealed the exteriors of housing from participants showed that university undergrads unblindfolded for fifteen seconds could not judge whether they were inside of a townhouse or a single family home! TLDR - wine is not fake. Some people like different things and are willing to pay for it. Article is pretty fair but underemphasizes diversity of preferences. Don't buy expensive wine or an expensive house just because it has a fancy label unless you know it has some feature that you care about. If it does and you can afford it, then sure, go have fun.
• MrGando 4y ago
  I'm pretty into wine, not in the industry though. But I've tried a lot of stuff (from garbo wines, to stuff like Rayas, Haut Brion, Romanee Conti, etc... some pretty heavy hitters), and I agree that money is not the driving factor. The economics are huge, like sometimes some small producer will just explode and their production is little... but the demand might be high and suddenly you're looking at a 10 euro bottle of wine, going for 120 euros. Lot's of times it's because they actually make something pretty remarkable, but sometimes not. Having said that, I've seen some incredible stuff. There was a tasting were a friend brought a bottle with him, it was a blind tasting and everyone was supposed to write down what their bottles were. So my friend presented his bottle concealed in aluminum paper as we used to do, and he wrote down the bottle + vintage. At the end of the night, notes were exchanged, and there was a very very strong taster in the group. It was burgundy night, and he nailed 4/5 wines (6 in total, but the one you brought didn't count), producer, wine, and vintage. My friend told him "you didn't guess the vintage of the one I brought", I don't remember but I think my friend thought that it was a 2008 and this guy said like 2009. When they revealed the bottles, the bottle was indeed a 2009 from the same producer. My friend had taken a different bottle from his cellar and he didn't realize :^). Some folks know what they're drinking very well indeed (5/5
• madeofpalk 4y ago
  > The critics failed to spot that both wines were from the same bottle. The only difference was that one had been coloured red with a flavourless dye. This baffles me. I struggle to believe so many people could fail to tell the difference between red wine and white wine. Maybe it’s just because I don’t particularly like red wines, but they taste totally distinct and not remotely comparable.
• karaterobot 4y ago
  > I’ll make one more confession — sometimes I prefer pizza from the greasy pizza joint down the street to pizza with exotic cheeses from a fancy Italian restaurant that costs twice as much. Does this mean the fancy Italian restaurant is a fraud? No, it means the original studies were right to have a sample large enough to account for one person who's taking a position they wouldn't normally take on that particular day! But what it doesn't do is invalidate the findings of the larger study. PS: I got to the end of the article thinking the author hadn't made a very convincing case, then I saw that it was Scott Alexander, and my first reaction was "oh, he's smarter than me, I probably didn't read it carefully enough." So, I guess I'm like the lady at the Judgment of Paris who asked for her scorecard back.
• mjklin 4y ago
  Wine quality = 12.145 + 0.00117 winter rainfall + 0.0614 average growing season temperature - 0.00386 harvest rainfall This is the formula developed by Orley Ashenfelter to predict the quality of wine, as described in the book Super Crunchers by Ian Ayres. It is the Moneyball of wine and he claims it does just as well as experts.
  • kubanczyk 4y ago
    Sahara will easily top this, no?
  • acuozzo 4y ago
    Does this formula applied to fortified wines e.g. Porto?
• hroland 4y ago
  My nerd ass thinking this was about WineHQ
  • rubicks 4y ago
    This was the story I was expecting.
• beiller 4y ago
  I once wrote software that automatically graded wine "sweetness" based on sugar grams/L output via Spectroscopy? (I think) in a lab. After learing which wines regions / varietals produced what rating (sweet / dry / extra dry) is pretty much all I need now when picking wine. I'd say the sweetness is probably the only major difference between varietals but maybe it's just me. Extra dry is what I like best.
  • BlueTemplar 4y ago
    Wait, wouldn't this mostly only work on whites ?
    • beiller 4y ago
      I believe white is generally higher sugar but there are drier white wines still. There was a model fit to sugar content and it worked across red white and rose.
• water8 4y ago
• itbeho 4y ago
  I work at a small intersection between wine and tech. Wine is not fake, but from a marketplace view can be considered as the progenitor of much of what we see today in tech. Before Silicon Valley, before Crypto, before Semiconductors... there was wine. And pretty much all of the same hype-machine rules have applied. You see wine that almost anyone would like get no traction whatsoever, and marginal swill marketed with lots of money and by influencers winning awards and notoriety.
• poulsbohemian 4y ago
  FWIW: If you are a person skeptical about wine or trying to understand the world of wine, the Somm movie series is really pretty good. There are absolutely objective differences in wine, in the same way as anything else - beer, whiskey, coffee, free range organic grass fed vs. CAFO. The person below who mentioned acetone taste in whiskey for example, is spot on - you teach your palette one thing and suddenly your whole perspective changes.
• jonahhorowitz 4y ago
  This line about cat urine is amazing. > (Do wines ever have 6-carbon carboxylic acids, or 10-carbon alkanes — i.e., goats, armpits or jet fuel? I am not a wine chemist and cannot answer this question. But one of the experts interviewed on Somm mentioned that a common tasting note is cat urine, but that in polite company you’re supposed to refer to it by the code phrase “blackcurrant bud.” Maybe one of those things wine experts say is code for “smells like a goat,” I don’t know.)
• laurencerowe 4y ago
  As someone who enjoys French table wine what is the local equivalent in California? So much of it seems to be high alcohol and overwhelming flavours, kinda like the IPAs.
• jpurnell 4y ago
  A few professors in my undergrad econ department have done a lot of actual academic research into this, and, in fact, started the American Association of Wine Economists (https://wine-economics.org https://wine-economics.org) with other economists who are interested in wine worldwide. They have a quarterly peer-reviewed journal, and the articles are genuinely interesting. Sample topics from the latest issue: "Does quality pay off? “Superstar” wines and the uncertain price premium across quality grades" or "Tracking the wines of the Judgment of Paris over time: The case of Stag’s Leap Wine Cellars’ Cabernet Sauvignon" A few things I've gleaned from them over the years: 1) People definitely come to a wine tasting and think they have to sound smart. There's always someone who thinks they need to say "something-something oaky" to "fit in" because it's something they saw on TV. The point is not to sound like what you think a smart person sounds like, the point is to find a wine you like. Hard to get around it, but that's what a lot of articles like this are basically pointing out. It's not wrong, but it's also kind of missing the point. 2) People have different fundamental taste profiles – just like some people just like Coke instead of Pepsi, and a €100 Pepsi will taste "bad" to someone who's expecting a €100 Coke. But if you like Pepsi – and there is a real reason that bottle of pepsi costs €100 (e.g. materials, aging, process, etc.) – you're really going to like that €100 Pepsi. 3) As a consequence of 1), there are definitely wines that are more "marketing driven," and tap into that insecurity. I know a few people who have been offered thousands of dollars to steam off the label of empty bottles of wine they kept in their cellar for sentimental reasons, so that those labels could be re-glued to a bottle of whatever, so that they could then be trotted out to pump some dude's ego. It's a shame, but that's people. 4) @Antognini is pretty on target here. For the same vintage, if you open it up right away, you can get a very tasty "house" bottle of wine for €15, but you should taste a very significant difference in the €40-€50 of wine from the same maker. The difference is more likely to show up when you cellar it. The €15 bottle might last for about 3-5 years before losing its taste. The €40 will gain complexity and flavor for 10-15 years. A more expensive bottle from a reputable maker should/might/maybe/is supposed to signal that it's been made to last even longer, like 40-50 years. 5) Plug: A few years ago, I adapted a DOS app the aforementioned professors in my undergrad used in their blind tastings for iOS. You can see results of their tastings going back to the early 90s at http://liquidasset.com http://liquidasset.com, and the app is at https://apps.apple.com/us/app/winetaster-3/id1491063699 https://apps.apple.com/us/app/winetaster-3/id1491063699
• rpmisms 4y ago
  I enjoy wine, but not to the level of detecting different ages or locations. I do, however, enjoy trying to find flavors in Whiskey, and I can attest that it's not all fake. The process and age makes a difference, and the age definitely comes out in the flavor of a whiskey. Of course it does, leaving a strong liquor in a cask will add flavors, and obviously time will determine how much of which flavors are imbued. I have a bottle of Bulleit rye, and my first taste impression was "I've had this before". Turns out it's made by some massive conglomerate that makes almost all rye whiskey in the US, and I had, indeed, had it before. It's as simple as recognizing a brand of ice cream or candy by taste. Candy might be harder, actually. Sugar masks flavor far better than alcohol.
• jan467 4y ago
  taste might be defined wrong taste is not your sensoric input on your tongue taste is a combination of this with smell and visual (eg. color), but also mood, expectation, environment, time, stresslevel, atmosphere, temperature, viscosity and people around. with this in mind, the exact same thing can taste like 100 times differently without changing the chemical side.
• rendall 4y ago
  Me, an American living in the EU: "You cannot mix wine with Coke. That just isn't done!" Spanish kids, from one of the top 3 premier wine-producing countries of the world: *laughing at my pretension* "Just try it!" Me: "That's... delicious!" Wine + Coca-Cola. Try it. Recommended by Spanish kids.
  • scruti 4y ago
    Just don't even think about using a decent wine for this. Just the cheapest you can find in the supermarket. BTW, we call it "kalimotxo".
    • rendall 4y ago
      Excellent
• rendall 4y ago
  > Wikipedia broadly agrees, saying: People must stop citing Wikipedia as a source. This example is particularly egregious, since Wikipedia uses the same sources that the article itself does, so of course it "agrees".
• hot_gril 4y ago
  This is how I know it's not fake: I was fortunate enough to taste very expensive wines repeatedly as a teenager, not understanding their significance. Yeah I thought the whole thing was snobby, but the wine just tasted so good! When I bought mid-tier wine for the first time at age 21, it tasted "hot," like rubbing alcohol. Same with all the others from the grocery store. I still buy it but often leave it sitting for hours before drinking it, even though I haven't tasted any expensive wines in several years. My friends always say I have low standards for living conditions, which maybe I do, but when it comes to wine, seems like I'm permanently spoiled.
• jeffrallen 4y ago
  I enjoy wine, but will happily admit I enjoy it more when the label is pretty, or when I've got an emotional connection to the region it comes from. I suppose wine snobs also enjoy wine for their own irrational reasons, and that's ok with me. Santé !
• fdjhsjkahfjkdsa 4y ago
  I'm a wine person, a few things to share: 1. If you doubt high end wine exists (e.g., it's all BS above $20 or whatever people say) and you have the means, find a bottle of Jean-Louis Chave Hermitage (the Syrah) of any vintage. Enjoy it at your favorite Italian / French restaurant. If they know wine they'll be happy you brought it. The Chave is far from cheap but it's affordable for what I call superwines (get it, like supercars?) and it really is something you'll never forget. There is a quality with great red wine that in indescribable -- I've never even met a wine person who can describe it -- but it's undeniable when you experience it. I've experienced it with great wines like that Chave and occasionally with (lucky) midrange wines. 2. The rest of an enjoyable relationship with wine is mostly avoiding bad ones. But you develop strategies for this over time. It's very easy to get a red wine that's harsh or a white wine that's too sweet. These won't be fun to drink and will pair poorly with food if you're eating. Some tips: - If you need a white to drink or eat with, favor Sauvignon Blanc -- it's not too sweet, it usually hasn't been oaked to death and apparently pretty hard to screw up. Get Marlborough if you want something fruity and anything French if you want something more laid back. - If you're eating red meat favor Napa Cab. It's really hard to go wrong here. - If you're in France or Italy just get anything. That close to the source + a strong wine culture you'll rarely be disappointed. This is a good time to try new wines. - If you need a Champagne, it's Billecart-Salmon without question. It's one of the smaller Champagne houses who isn't caught up in prestige-pricing, glamour Champagne fashion BS. Affordable and excellent. Things to avoid: - Bordeaux -- now, I drink this a lot but I have experience. If you really need to (it's sounds cool) favor the left bank wines. They're generally higher value. I say avoid because the market is full of crappy, low cost Bordeaux that just takes advantage of the label. - Burgundy -- just say no. Burgundy is arguably the best red. But not the bottle you're going to buy. You have to really know what you're doing here or be willing to spend a lot. I've gotten lucky once with a cheap bottle of Burgundy and when I say cheap that is relative. - Pinot in general. Burgundy can rarely pull it off, no one else can either. - Chardonnay -- tends to be too oaky or too sweet. - Pretty much any other white, for the same reason. - Sparkling wine. See Champagne above. Prosecco is too sweet and pretty much everything else is a crapshoot. Wash: - Italian reds are my favorite and they can be equally good and affordable but it's a bit of a crapshoot. Look for things that are 100% Nebbiolo, Sangiovese or 'Super Tuscans' which are basically the same blend as Bordeaux (but usually better at the same price). For the most part, avoid the other stuff. - Montrachet -- arguably the best white (Chardonnay) that can be had but they're pricy and still hit and miss.
• bloodyplonker22 4y ago
  I have a friend who is a sommelier who told me that she could turn a $20 bottle of wine that I had into a $100 bottle. She took the wine from my hand, plonked it on the table and said "here is your $20 dollar wine". Then, she took it again, brought it behind her back, back around to the front, and presented it to me with two hands -- one hand under the main body of the bottle and one hand on the neck of the bottle. "Here is your $100 dollar wine, sir".
• chinathrow 4y ago
  Of course it's all subjective: you either like a wine or you don't.
• SwiftyBug 4y ago
  Off-topic: I was very surprised by how expensive wine is in California. I live in an European country where you can find good wine for less than 5 EUR a bottle. I couldn't find anything below 20 USD a bottle neither in San Francisco or Los Angeles. Why is wine so expensive in California if it's such a major wine producer?
  • danielfoster 4y ago
    Increased taxes and the higher cost of operating in California. Check Trader Joe’s— they have a great selection of budget wines. I hate buying wine in the US generally because the markup is so high. A 5 euro bottle in the EU could easily cost $20 in the US.
  • Tepix 4y ago
    Indeed. When i was there i noticed that even wine from California is more expensive in California than it is in Europe.
• antirez 4y ago
  10% of market and wine experts are real. The rest is overpriced wines of doubtful quality, fake prices just to give prestige, and so forth. As a rule of thumb, spending 20-50 euros per bottle you can drink italian top wines (French wines are more costly). If you are spending 350 euros for a bottle of Sassicaia or paying a Bordeaux 800 euros, you are probably misleaded by the market. It's not that a top quality Bordeaux is not a great wine, but after the 30/40 euros the quality gain is only marginal and non linear at all, so sometimes a cheaper wine of a less famous maker is going to be better than a wine you pay a lot. 90% of trained customers (the ones that did some kind of 3 months course) can't tell great wines from mediocre wines apart. Bonus: want to drink a top quality italian wine spending just 30 euros? Buy a couple of bottles of Passorosso by Franchetti. Etna Red, Sicily. Drink it together with some top quality French pinot noir and tell me if it's not on par.
• lemax 4y ago
  Wine quality ranking (and price) in France is less interested in what tastes good and more interested in what is most distinctive. A lot of fine wine is priced on geographic prestige / scarcity. For example, there are many hectares of land that can produce Chablis (much of it perfectly fine to you and me), but only 1% of the wine producing estates of the region have Grand Cru status. This status is a combination of competency of the wine producer + geography of the estate (more so geography). The chablis grand cru producing estates sit at the top of the appelation, and all the environmental variables (“terroir”) of this micro area and the expression of these in the final product contribute to the wine being considered more distinctive.
• pjerem 4y ago
  For sure, it's not an emulator.
• pea 4y ago
  I blind-tasted wine competitively at an international level and it is pretty commonplace to identify region/sub-region/year/grape across 10 wines blind with ~80% accuracy. In fact, many tastings go further than this and you identify chateau/year from 10 wines from the same region - i.e. the Oxbridge teams mentioned there also do a blind tasting competition specifically on left bank Bordeaux. It's relatively straightforward to train yourself to do this. Note that the physical properties of the wine play heavily into this too (colour, reflection in light, viscosity are proxies for alcohol, age, grape, treatment). Additionally, having the requisite knowledge of "this wine would never be served this old, this wasn't a good year in this region because of x weather, this region only grows x,y,z" means you can deduce a lot from quite little information. I do think people overfit on the colour piece though; you could definitely find some reds and whites which, if tasted without seeing the colour and at the same temperature, would be challenging to tell apart, more-so than differentiating between country/grape/region. I'm not sure what this really proves, apart from being counterintuitive. That said, there is a lot of bullshit in market of people who buy and sell expensive wine (more so than the professional tasters and vineyards, who are usually genuine enthusiasts). Lots of cheaper wines may be more enjoyable, and wine flavour profiles are often full of weird signalling about what constitutes quality, i.e. "tasting note x is considered desirable/refined/distinguished, ergo it tastes better", which is nonsense and snobbery. Without any bias you might think expensive and old bordeaux tastes like an old boot, but if you've been trained that those specific flavour profiles are distinguished and desirable ('hints of leather and earth').
• nottorp 4y ago
  Tbh I just avoid wine because there are too many options.
  • acuozzo 4y ago
    Drink Madeira! It cuts the space down considerably. https://enofylzwineblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/Madeira-Infographic.png https://enofylzwineblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/Madei...
• dosethree 4y ago
  Expensive wines are expensive because they are rare, not because they are better. If you value your money its not for you. The same is not true of beer, I can't really say with liquor
• greyhair 4y ago
  I enjoy wine, I am not a connoisseur by any stretch, but I can differentiate enough that I know what I like, and what I don't. Friends of mine have held two professionally run wine tastings over the years, and they were great fun, and very educational. The wines were all decanted, you could not see what they were, and it was interesting to see that every wine scored on a bell curve with the group. The scores were anonymous, so you didn't have to worry about how you felt about any given wine. My favorite part is that in each of the two tasting sessions, the highest price bottle scored well, but not at the top. In each, the top white and the top red were both roughly $30 dollar bottles. Also in each, a couple roughly $10 bottles scored really well. The other thing that I learned, and apply regularly, is that at the $20 price point, you are generally buying a good tasting bottle of wine. $16 to $24 seems to be a really safe range for my tastes