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I had the privilege to get a behind the scenes tour of a winery once because a friend’s family were the owners. They had some pretty sophisticated lab equipment

by CSSer 4y ago

I had the privilege to get a behind the scenes tour of a winery once because a friend’s family were the owners. They had some pretty sophisticated lab equipment. You could drop in a sample and it could tell you all sorts of things about its chemical makeup (magic to me because I never took much Chemistry). I asked them what sample attribute had the highest correlation with sales and without even hesitating they told me it was sugar content. They said their best selling wine was also their sweetest. They even said it was a pretty strong correlation that held all the way down the line from sweet, citrusy varietals to tannin-rich, cottony varietals. I think I was even told they could sometimes observe the effect from year to year if one vintage crop happened to be a little more or less sweet than the last year. Now, for the record, I take the same approach you and GP mentioned here. I happen to prefer pretty dry wines too, but I’ve gotta admit knowing this shook me a little.

antognini 4y ago
> I asked them what sample attribute had the highest correlation with sales and without even hesitating they told me it was sugar content. This was the cause of a big scandal back in the 1980s when it was discovered that some Austrian winemakers were adding antifreeze to their wines. The wines are tested for their sugar content, but diethylene glycol has a sweet test and wouldn't be detected on standard chemical tests for sugar. Unscrupulous winemakers began adding the chemical to their wines to make them taste sweeter and boost sales.
- masklinn 4y ago
  So that’s why it happened. I’d heard about the event but not the reason so I always assumed it had been some sort of contamination, or related to wine preservation. But no it was straight up devs bypass?
  - BiteCode_dev 4y ago
    Adding sugar to wine is considered a great offense, and is not only illegal in France, but a disagrace. Still, some winemaker wake up in the middle of the night to do it in secret because it's hard to get a sweet taste or more alcohol naturally. Therefor, the anti-freeze workaround is not surprising.
    - skywal_l 4y ago
      > Adding sugar to wine is considered a great offense, and is not only illegal in France, but a disagrace. That's not true. Adding sugar is even part of some AOP. It's used to regulate the amount alcohol in the finish product.
      - BiteCode_dev 4y ago
        It was a simplification on my part. If you want to be precise, then chaptalisation (the process of regulating alcohol quantity using sugar) is illegal in south of France vineyards, forbidden everywhwere when mixed with acidification processes, and allowed but under very strict conditions otherwise in "septentrionales" vineyards (which I have no idea how to translate in English).
        masklinn 4y ago
        > and allowed but under very strict conditions otherwise in "septentrionales" vineyards (which I have no idea how to translate in English). Northern / northerly?
- petre 4y ago
- soco 4y ago
  "Chateau Scam 2014: Italy’s Weird World of Wine Fraud" https://www.thedailybeast.com/chateau-scam-2014-italys-weird-world-of-wine-fraud https://www.thedailybeast.com/chateau-scam-2014-italys-weird...
- plugin-baby 4y ago
  > a sweet test ... chemical tests Assuming this isn’t just an autocorrect issue, is there a word for this phenomenon of writing an incorrect but similar word that’s also on your mind? It happens to me with annoying frequency.
  - IggleSniggle 4y ago
    Should have coded your brain in Rust, then you wouldn't have these sort of unsafe concurrent memory-access problems
    - greyhair 4y ago
      Dude, my brain is already rusty enough.
  - themarlzy 4y ago
    Freudian slip or parapraxis?
petre 4y ago
Which directly reflects the quality of the wine drinking public. I like the French approach better: educate your customers' tastes. In Russia they also drink sweet wines because most people there view wine as a juice that one puts in their vodka. The rich substitute the wine with very expensive champagne.
- 331c8c71 4y ago
  > drink sweet wines because most people there view wine as a juice that one puts in their vodka. I haven't seen anyone mixing wine and vodka there, it's just not a thing.
- vkazanov 4y ago
  Hm. Russia and Balkans and the austro-hungarian region preferring sweeter wines is a centuries old culture and a wine making tradition. The same goes for Georgian wines. Vodka with wine... is that even a joke?
  - dontlaugh 4y ago
    Maybe they're referring to fortified wine, which is made in parts of Eastern Europe?
    - vkazanov 4y ago
      The comment I replied to doesn't sound too informed. Fortified wine culture sounds more like Portugal to me, even though they definitely make it almost everywhere. EDIT: typo
- rrrrrrrrrrrryan 4y ago
  The Russian preference for sweet wine might be due to Stalin, actually: > The production of Soviet champagne prioritized quantity over quality. Grape growers uprooted acres of indigenous vines from Moldova to Tajikistan and replaced them with durable, high-yield varieties that catered to Stalin’s sweet tooth. > The result was Sovetskoye Shampanskoye, a cheap, syrup-sweet sparkling wine for the ordinary Soviet worker. https://www.singaporewinevault.com/busting-the-myths-around-russian-wines/ https://www.singaporewinevault.com/busting-the-myths-around-...

by CSSer 4y ago

antognini 4y ago

> I asked them what sample attribute had the highest correlation with sales and without even hesitating they told me it was sugar content. This was the cause of a big scandal back in the 1980s when it was discovered that some Austrian winemakers were adding antifreeze to their wines. The wines are tested for their sugar content, but diethylene glycol has a sweet test and wouldn't be detected on standard chemical tests for sugar. Unscrupulous winemakers began adding the chemical to their wines to make them taste sweeter and boost sales.

masklinn 4y ago
So that’s why it happened. I’d heard about the event but not the reason so I always assumed it had been some sort of contamination, or related to wine preservation. But no it was straight up devs bypass?
- BiteCode_dev 4y ago
  Adding sugar to wine is considered a great offense, and is not only illegal in France, but a disagrace. Still, some winemaker wake up in the middle of the night to do it in secret because it's hard to get a sweet taste or more alcohol naturally. Therefor, the anti-freeze workaround is not surprising.
  - skywal_l 4y ago
    > Adding sugar to wine is considered a great offense, and is not only illegal in France, but a disagrace. That's not true. Adding sugar is even part of some AOP. It's used to regulate the amount alcohol in the finish product.
    - BiteCode_dev 4y ago
      It was a simplification on my part. If you want to be precise, then chaptalisation (the process of regulating alcohol quantity using sugar) is illegal in south of France vineyards, forbidden everywhwere when mixed with acidification processes, and allowed but under very strict conditions otherwise in "septentrionales" vineyards (which I have no idea how to translate in English).
      - masklinn 4y ago
        > and allowed but under very strict conditions otherwise in "septentrionales" vineyards (which I have no idea how to translate in English). Northern / northerly?
petre 4y ago
soco 4y ago
"Chateau Scam 2014: Italy’s Weird World of Wine Fraud" https://www.thedailybeast.com/chateau-scam-2014-italys-weird-world-of-wine-fraud https://www.thedailybeast.com/chateau-scam-2014-italys-weird...
plugin-baby 4y ago
> a sweet test ... chemical tests Assuming this isn’t just an autocorrect issue, is there a word for this phenomenon of writing an incorrect but similar word that’s also on your mind? It happens to me with annoying frequency.
- IggleSniggle 4y ago
  Should have coded your brain in Rust, then you wouldn't have these sort of unsafe concurrent memory-access problems
  - greyhair 4y ago
    Dude, my brain is already rusty enough.
- themarlzy 4y ago
  Freudian slip or parapraxis?

petre 4y ago

Which directly reflects the quality of the wine drinking public. I like the French approach better: educate your customers' tastes. In Russia they also drink sweet wines because most people there view wine as a juice that one puts in their vodka. The rich substitute the wine with very expensive champagne.

331c8c71 4y ago
> drink sweet wines because most people there view wine as a juice that one puts in their vodka. I haven't seen anyone mixing wine and vodka there, it's just not a thing.
vkazanov 4y ago
Hm. Russia and Balkans and the austro-hungarian region preferring sweeter wines is a centuries old culture and a wine making tradition. The same goes for Georgian wines. Vodka with wine... is that even a joke?
- dontlaugh 4y ago
  Maybe they're referring to fortified wine, which is made in parts of Eastern Europe?
  - vkazanov 4y ago
    The comment I replied to doesn't sound too informed. Fortified wine culture sounds more like Portugal to me, even though they definitely make it almost everywhere. EDIT: typo
rrrrrrrrrrrryan 4y ago
The Russian preference for sweet wine might be due to Stalin, actually: > The production of Soviet champagne prioritized quantity over quality. Grape growers uprooted acres of indigenous vines from Moldova to Tajikistan and replaced them with durable, high-yield varieties that catered to Stalin’s sweet tooth. > The result was Sovetskoye Shampanskoye, a cheap, syrup-sweet sparkling wine for the ordinary Soviet worker. https://www.singaporewinevault.com/busting-the-myths-around-russian-wines/ https://www.singaporewinevault.com/busting-the-myths-around-...