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$2.70 supermarket wine wins gold medal at international wine contest

72 points by thyrox 3y ago

ftxbro 3y ago
> The organizers of this intriguing prank started out by enlisting the help of Eric Boschman, named Belgium’s best sommelier in 1988 OK so they got a famous and trusted sommelier to lie for their story. What does that prove?
- noslenwerdna 3y ago
  It proves that the judges were just using the recommendation of a sommelier rather than actually judging the quality of the wine?
  - cratermoon 3y ago
    That and the €50 ($55) entrance fee proves that the contest is more of a marketing stunt for Gilbert & Gaillard than a real test of wine-making ability. Many industries have these "contests". Photography publications, for example, run contests that collect entry fees, and winners get featured in the publication. There are writing contests run the same way. It gives the publication content, and instead of paying artists they charge them money.
- kylebenzle 3y ago
  This prank along with previous studies prove that wine tasting is 100% made up. Anyone telling you they can taste the difference, even between red and white wine, is lying. Its AMAZING that it seems like 99% of average people are convinced that they can taste the difference between red and white wine but they cant.
  - ericbarrett 3y ago
    I've watched somebody correctly identify the grape and region of France that a wine came from in a double-blind test.
  - cookingrobot 3y ago
    It’s true sometimes people can’t guess if what they’re tasting is red or white. And people may not agree on which wines they like better. But it’s obviously true that different wines taste different. This is easy (and fun) to test at home.
    - noirbot 3y ago
      Yea, this is always the thing that gets me about the "lol wine tasting is all lies" crowd. Sure, I'll easily admit that I may not be able to identify and explain the difference between various grapes or such, but that doesn't mean all wine tastes literally exactly the same. I don't necessarily like wine because it's a specific grape, or a specific origin, or more or less expensive, but that doesn't invalidate that I prefer it to some other wine. And an experienced person who has tried a lot of wine, may be able to take my explanation of what I like and recommend me something I'd like more than something else. It's a bad argument that relies on muddling the objective and the subjective. Yes, in a totally blind tasting, people can be surprised by what they think something is. But if I walk into a wine bar, and tell them I like red wines that are dry and have red fruit flavors, they can likely give me something I'll enjoy. If they tell me that there's a white wine that they think I'll like because of that explanation, then sweet, that sounds cool and different. It doesn't mean that hurr durr all wine is the same.
  - reducesuffering 3y ago
    I will drink the most bottom of the barrel reds happily but you can shoot me if I couldn’t tell the difference between a red and white.
  - Daishiman 3y ago
    This is a myth that's been perpetuated by a single bad study that lacks any credibility whatsoever.
    - kurthr 3y ago
      Yeah, and it's pretty easy to test by just buying two (a red and a white) bottles and trying yourself. Of course most red food dye the wrong color and you would probably taste it if you used that much... so just blindfold your self and try. The lack of tannins, malolactic fermentation, and often the lack of oak will make it pretty obvious they are different. It's like saying you can't taste the difference between a Guiness and a Bud, because you've never had them before? Maybe you don't know which is which with a blindfold on, but you can taste the difference.
      - dagw 3y ago
        To be fair, there exists white wines with tannins, oak and even light skin maceration which, if coloured red, could confuse some people inexperience with those types of whites.
        kurthr 3y ago
        Certainly, Grenache comes to mind as a red varietal/preparation that could be confused with some whites. There aren't many common (cheap) white wines with much tannin, perhaps some heavy contact SavBlanc, but that nose is so distinctive that it would be hard to confuse? My point is mostly about the $3-10 wines which have pretty simple notes. They have very particular styles and relatively restricted grape varietals due to cost, availability, and customer expectations. I'm sure for the right money a good winemaker could take the right white grape and make it taste like a cheap red without the color (lots of skin contact, malolactic fermentation, heavy oak, and some age. On the other spectrum, I'm sure you could screw up and make any wine/grape so terrible you couldn't tell what it came from. There are also people who couldn't tell the difference between a pilsner and an ale, I suppose.
  - berkle4455 3y ago
    > Its AMAZING that it seems like 99% of average people are convinced that they can taste the difference between red and white wine I'm not sure what sort of high-quality wine you drink, cause I drink cheap stuff, and I can 100% tell the difference between a pinot noir and pinot grigio. Red vs. white isn't a coke vs pepsi thing, it's a coke vs mountain dew.
  - arp242 3y ago
    If you play a bunch of notes for me then I won't be able to identify them exactly either, and I might not even rank them correctly from high to low (especially when played on a variety of instruments) because I'm about as tonedeaf as they come. That doesn't mean I can't distinguish two songs, or that I can't like one song and dislike another. People may not be able to identify wine tastes very accurately, but that doesn't mean that "anyone telling you they can taste the difference, even between red and white wine, is lying". Obviously there are differences in taste between different wines, and that statement is so utterly bizarre and so obviously untrue it makes me wonder if you have ever tasted more than one bottle of wine.
  - OJFord 3y ago
    That's complete nonsense, though obviously not 100% (I'm no sommelier) I could definitely identify some grapes blind (and then implicitly could tell you if it's red or white). And a master sommelier... well they can do that and then some. If I wasn't sure of the grape, sure I might not confidently say if it's red or white. Because other than visually that isn't really as big a deal as it naïvely seems? Wine doesn't taste 'red' or 'white' it has different flavours and some grapes are red and others are white, but that's really only a visual difference. (Ok fine some flavours or textures are so much more common in one vs the other that it might allow a solid guess of the colour even if you had no idea of the grape - 'minerally' or 'bready'/'yeasty' tasting/smelling is probably white; very tannic is probably red. But I think my point stands, it's pretty meaningless, and certainty will come from identifying something more specific, and then knowing what colour that is, to satisfy the naïve hater that thinks that's the most important trait.)
    - barelysurviving 3y ago
      White wine can also be made from red grapes.
      - OJFord 3y ago
        Sure, and maybe you do mean that in agreement, but doesn't that go to my point that the colour isn't really as relevant as someone who thinks it's all a scam and anyone who thinks they like wine is an idiot believes? And some are blends of both, but we'd call the result white or red according to what dominates. Champagne for example.
  - Tommstein 3y ago
    > Anyone telling you they can taste the difference, even between red and white wine, is lying. Its AMAZING that it seems like 99% of average people are convinced that they can taste the difference between red and white wine but they cant. Bro, what? I hardly drink wine, and couldn't tell you whether a red wine is the finest red wine ever or the shittiest, and likewise for white wines, but I can absolutely tell you whether a wine is red or white. Don't know what the hell wines you're drinking.
  - dagw 3y ago
    Anyone telling you they can taste the difference, even between red and white wine, is lying. There are competitions all around the world where you can go and literally watch people doing this in real time. Anybody can learn to fairly reliably identify 5-6 of most common grapes in a blind tasting with a bit of practice.
yumraj 3y ago
> they decided to go with the cheapest and worst-tasting one they could find. It’s interesting that one group found it worst tasting, while another found it exceptional. Looks like both suck, and maybe the wine was not the best but not the worst either. Just like the judges were duped into awarding this wine, the first group also thought this was worst tasting because it was the cheapest.
- Daishiman 3y ago
  The entire of the article is that the contest is a sham, not a comparative thing about the subjectivity of taste. Bad wine clearly stands out as bad. Bad wine doesn’t mean “wine you don’t like”. It means “technically flawed wine such that even if you liked this wine you would be very unlikely to prefer it to others in its category”.
- dagw 3y ago
  It's equally likely that they never really tasted the wine. They just read the faked lab report, tasting notes and recommendations and gave out the award. These competitions are pay-to-play so if they make it too hard to win, people will stop playing and they won't get paid.
BenjiWiebe 3y ago
Weird how they do it. We recently sent in some of our family farm cheese to a contest. The judges don't know the name of the cheese or see the labels. They just taste (/smell/feel/eyeball) the cheese and judge it. No judging of the back story.
- Legend2440 3y ago
  Why should they judge the backstory? Only the finished product matters, the rest is marketing.
  - jc_811 3y ago
    In the article it mentions how the backstory was part of how they fooled the judges. OP is agreeing with your sentiment about how the backstory should be irrelevant
- deleted 3y ago
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WheelsAtLarge 3y ago
A while back I spoke to a winemaker who told me that her job was to make a wine that would match any of the price winning wines for less than $40 a bottle. They would buy the wines that won, analyze and match the flavor profile anyway they had to. She would blend wines from different areas and come up with the best flavor she could. Wine making is not what it used to be. At one time the difference between good wine and great wine was huge. Now with automation and know how it's possible to have great tasting wine be inexpensive. There's also the situation where winemakers sell their excess wine to bottlers so it's very possible that a great wine is sold cheaply simply because the wine maker needs to sell the excess inventory. This situation where a very cheap wine wins a contest is not surprising. The big difference is that the flavor of a more expensive wine is more consistent than one you buy very cheaply.
- Stevvo 3y ago
  A uniquely American take. Great wine for cheap has always existed in Europe. Before much of it started being exported to the USA, even more so.
  - adamredwoods 3y ago
    This is what I was thinking, too. I can usually tell between cheap "jammy" wines from the US, which I don't like, versus the cheap Cotes du Rhone I buy, which tastes delicious.
- Daishiman 3y ago
  This is all possibly but it works to a limited extent; there are taste descriptors of aged wines, for example, that are impossible to imitate cheaply. All winemakers are capable of designing wines to a broad set of possible tastes with remarkably latitude, but money gets you way more options.
  - noirbot 3y ago
    Yea, I feel like that's true of spirits as well. It's easier to get an acceptable Scotch or Rum than it used to be, but at some point, the cost to age something for 5, let alone 10 or 20 years just isn't something you can shortcut, and it produces different flavors. Not to say that a 10 year aged spirit is better than a younger one, but if you do like that flavor, then there's not much else you can do to get it.
rhaway84773 3y ago
This doesn’t seem like a particularly prestigious contest. It seems the people doing the “prank” intended to show that a lot of these contests are not legitimate and just an opportunity for the organizers to make some money. It would be interesting to see whether a legitimate contest that did blind taste tests would fall for such a trick.
- OJFord 3y ago
  Absolutely. The title alludes to the IWC which is at least a fairly prestigious award, and I couldn't have told you it stood for 'international wine challenge' before now, so frankly did think that's what it was. But that isn't where it won gold, it's something I've never heard of and the tasting isn't even blind (eye-catching label, etc.).
themiddleupper 3y ago
This seems to have been a prank to prove the contest was asham But in much more "authentic" contest, what determines if a wine is better than another? Are they not just different taste and liking them or not is a person's subjective opinion, similar to food preference?
- friend_and_foe 3y ago
  Its all a bunch of bullshit man.
  - Daishiman 3y ago
    This is cope from people who don't want to admit the world has depth that takes skill and expertise to explore.
    - friend_and_foe 3y ago
      The world does, booze is booze. Sure, it's different, but all the lore is just marketing.
      - Daishiman 3y ago
        And cars are cars and reading is just reading, right?
- andirk 3y ago
  You, assuming you have no knowledge of wine, can absolutely tell the difference between truck stop $2.70 wine and a well made wine from a seasoned winemaker+vineyard+grapes+region. Yeah these awards are often hot air, but the claim that no one can tell the difference between well made wine and garbage wine is a joke. It's black and white, especially when you wake up the next day.
- dagw 3y ago
  There are certain more 'objective' criteria used to judge wines. In fact one of the things you learn when learning to taste and judge wine is to try to separate what you like from judging if it is a well made wine. A big one is complexity. Wines with a complex flavour profile (ie lots of different flavours) are generally judged as better than wines with a simple flavour profile. Another is length of finish. How long does a pleasant flavour linger in the mouth after swallowing. You can also judge how close the wine is to how a wine of that type is 'supposed' to taste, and how well the wine maker managed to achieve what they where trying to achieve. You might not particularly like Chianti, but you can still judge if the wine you are drinking is a really well made Chianti.
friend_and_foe 3y ago
So I make wine, and I do wine tastings and liquor tastings. The first thing to know, unless you're getting gut rot shit made from petroleum, is that all of it gets you drunk, which is what you're after. Wine, beer and liquor are lifestyle items. If they sold you this stuff on it's actual pitch you'd just grab the bottle closest to checkout and leave. So they have to differentiate themselves with lore, stories, stereotypes, whatever. But at the end of the day, it's all booze. What's the difference between a Jack Daniels drinker and a belvedere vodka drinker? How they view themselves, the type of person they want to portray themselves as and the stories the ads for the bottles tell. People will rationalize that they like it after thefact, and make all kinds of excuses to avoid admitting to themselves that it's vanity and they want to be seen doing it. Made 100% sustainably by an ancient family recipe triple distilled in copper pots using geothermal heat from a volcano in Nicaragua, its all a bunch of bullshit. Just get what tastes good to you and forget about the noise. I make wine, as a hobby. And I'll tell you, I'd rather drink my simple as hell fruit wine than any of that smoky shit the cute girl at the grocery store tries to sell me with samples. The entire wine tasting world is a sham, I don't mean most, all of it is a giant sham. And for those of you that do wine tastings and buy it, it's easier to fool someone than to convince them that they've been fooled. Just get what tastes good to you and forget about Tue noise.
- jameshush 3y ago
  Every human buys with emotion and then justifies with "logic" after the fact. I know this, and I still just paid thousands of dollars on a rock for my future wife's finger ;-).
  - ksaj 3y ago
    You've made De Beers very happy. Just kidding. But try to resell it, and you'll notice a discrepancy that you've not seen in hardly any other product outside of NFTs. Diamonds may be forever, but their resale value sure isn't.
    - Spivak 3y ago
      Also they're kinda.. boring? Like visually appealing diamonds have become so commoditized you can buy them at grocery stores. Like it's not even a status symbol anymore in any sense of the word. You're the only person who will know if you have some super rare expensive diamond, we could play the game of "Is it Jared or Neil Lane?" most people won't do much better than flipping a coin. Assuming a ring is important to you the only things you really need is a metal that's sufficiently soft so it'll be comfortable to wear 24/7, won't rust, and (optionally) some stones you think look cool. My engagement ring is alexandrite and moonstone because I thought the color changing was cool. The reaction I get from people who see it is this weird combination of "wow that's so pretty" and "for some reason I don't think I'm allowed to do that for myself."
matteoraso 3y ago
Wine tasting is a great example of how stats can mislead people. People hear that sommeliers can't tell the difference between cheap wine and expensive wine, and come to the conclusion that sommeliers don't know what they're talking about. They aren't trying to guess the price, though, they're trying to explain and appraise the flavour. A better view of wine tasting is that high quality wines can be purchased at very good prices.
andirk 3y ago
To anyone who thinks even YOU, with no knowledge of wine, cannot tell bottom barrel gas station wine vs. wine made from experts who know what they're doing is a joke. I have personally had my friends BLIND taste test my favorite wines (~$80-$150/bottle) and garbage wine, and no one picks the garbage wine. Why? Because garbage wine doesn't taste very good. Yes, price points can be ridiculous. A $60 bottle can be better than $1,000 bottle EASILY, because a lot of it is name recognition, rarity, etc. and these medals means almost nothing. Look for brand, region, winemaker, etc. and you can repeat with success. Disclaimer: I'm fine with cheap wine (~$20/bottle) that's good, and I buy it often. Just like I don't eat at "Michelin Star" restaurants every day.
- Incipient 3y ago
  I don't think this article is saying that "gas station wine" tastes as good as "fancy wine". It's not talking about quality. They're making the point that cheap wine can be good. So yes junk wine is junk, but not all cheap wine is junk. I do however expect for this particular instance, they spent a lot of time finding a particularly wonderful €3 wine - while the vast majority at this price probably are distinctly less good.
  - commoner 3y ago
    > I do however expect for this particular instance, they spent a lot of time finding a particularly wonderful €3 wine - while the vast majority at this price probably are distinctly less good. The article says the opposite: > There were plenty of wines under €3 to choose from, but they decided to go with the cheapest and worst-tasting one they could find. a €2.50 bottle was selected and then disguised it as a premium product by naming it ‘Chateau Colombier’ and creating a more eye-catching label.
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ameliaquining 3y ago
Re: the controversy about what's really going on here, here's an informal literature review from a writer I like: https://asteriskmag.com/issues/01/is-wine-fake https://asteriskmag.com/issues/01/is-wine-fake
HelixEndeavor 3y ago
Professional wine tasters are proven to be full of shit from top to bottom time and time again, and yet they still have careers, it's still a very wealthy industry, and people still give them the time of day. Pretty wild.
splonk 3y ago
Not to detract from the general point that most alcohol tasting medals are just marketing and not particularly scientific, but this article is kind of misleading. In a lot of alcohol tasting competitions (including Gilbert & Gaillard), the scale actually goes Double Gold, Gold, Silver, Bronze. A gold medal in itself doesn't actually mean what you might think it should (i.e., best in class), it's basically so you can sell stickers to put on bottles to fool buyers who don't know the specifics of how these competitions are scored. Broadly, I would interpret Double Gold as "might be good", Gold as "might not suck", and Silver/Bronze as "probably pretty bad since they're marketing their participation ribbons". An example from the spirits world: the San Francisco Spirits Competition has a 119 page list of results with medals (https://www.sfspiritscomp.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/2020-sfwsc-results-by-class.pdf https://www.sfspiritscomp.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/202...). There's maybe 1-2 Double Golds per page. GABF, the big beer festival, doesn't award Double Golds, but their categories are specific enough that they awarded 100 Gold medals last year. G&G has this wine listed on their site 3 times. I'm not sure which one is accurate, but the scores are from 85-88. Here's what wine-searcher (a big shopping portal/aggregator for wine) says about the distribution of G&G's ratings: "Gilbert & Gaillard's wine scores on Wine-Searcher: Score range: 85 – 100 points 50% fall between: 86 – 90 points Average score: 88.5 points" So basically, they rated it as below average on a scale that inflates ratings to the point where almost everything is marketable. Finally, according to G&G's rules, the wines are tasted blind. The article implies that they're not, but doesn't actually say it. "Prior to tasting, they [the wine samples] are placed in identical packaging that conceals their shape and guarantees anonymity." https://vigneron.gilbertgaillard.com/ruleChallenge/reglement-en.pdf https://vigneron.gilbertgaillard.com/ruleChallenge/reglement... I know nothing about this specific competition, but there's no real need to try to influence a nonblind judge given how the deck is already stacked.
huksley 3y ago
I think the most reasonable is to go for the grape variety you like and the price point you can afford. Wine is a hobby by itself, you can drink 6 months Pinot Noir, then switch to Malbec, then switch to something else. Plus you can travel on the budget from Chile, Australia, France, USA, Italy...
nemoniac 3y ago
So what was the $2.70 bottle of wine that they chose? We'd all like to taste it!
TradingPlaces 3y ago
Years ago, my wife and I went to a “make your own wine” thing in Napa. A few months later we had a blind tasting of our two wines, a $12 bottle of Kirkland Signature from Costco, and a $125 bottle. 6 tasters, and the unanimous result was for the Kirkland Signature. If you’re in Napa, check out the wine making thing. It’s lots of fun. https://www.conncreek.com/visit https://www.conncreek.com/visit
LargoLasskhyfv 3y ago
So much talk, without one mention, of the 'sonication of wine' (and spirits too!), the latest invention. I wonder why? Are you shy to confide, there is nothing to hide anymore? Except old-fashionedness. And distress, fear of loss and comfort-zone. The emperor, agein naked on the throne?

72 points by thyrox 3y ago

> The organizers of this intriguing prank started out by enlisting the help of Eric Boschman, named Belgium’s best sommelier in 1988 OK so they got a famous and trusted sommelier to lie for their story. What does that prove?

noslenwerdna 3y ago
It proves that the judges were just using the recommendation of a sommelier rather than actually judging the quality of the wine?
- cratermoon 3y ago
  That and the €50 ($55) entrance fee proves that the contest is more of a marketing stunt for Gilbert & Gaillard than a real test of wine-making ability. Many industries have these "contests". Photography publications, for example, run contests that collect entry fees, and winners get featured in the publication. There are writing contests run the same way. It gives the publication content, and instead of paying artists they charge them money.
kylebenzle 3y ago
This prank along with previous studies prove that wine tasting is 100% made up. Anyone telling you they can taste the difference, even between red and white wine, is lying. Its AMAZING that it seems like 99% of average people are convinced that they can taste the difference between red and white wine but they cant.
- ericbarrett 3y ago
  I've watched somebody correctly identify the grape and region of France that a wine came from in a double-blind test.
- cookingrobot 3y ago
  It’s true sometimes people can’t guess if what they’re tasting is red or white. And people may not agree on which wines they like better. But it’s obviously true that different wines taste different. This is easy (and fun) to test at home.
  - noirbot 3y ago
    Yea, this is always the thing that gets me about the "lol wine tasting is all lies" crowd. Sure, I'll easily admit that I may not be able to identify and explain the difference between various grapes or such, but that doesn't mean all wine tastes literally exactly the same. I don't necessarily like wine because it's a specific grape, or a specific origin, or more or less expensive, but that doesn't invalidate that I prefer it to some other wine. And an experienced person who has tried a lot of wine, may be able to take my explanation of what I like and recommend me something I'd like more than something else. It's a bad argument that relies on muddling the objective and the subjective. Yes, in a totally blind tasting, people can be surprised by what they think something is. But if I walk into a wine bar, and tell them I like red wines that are dry and have red fruit flavors, they can likely give me something I'll enjoy. If they tell me that there's a white wine that they think I'll like because of that explanation, then sweet, that sounds cool and different. It doesn't mean that hurr durr all wine is the same.
- reducesuffering 3y ago
  I will drink the most bottom of the barrel reds happily but you can shoot me if I couldn’t tell the difference between a red and white.
- Daishiman 3y ago
  This is a myth that's been perpetuated by a single bad study that lacks any credibility whatsoever.
  - kurthr 3y ago
    Yeah, and it's pretty easy to test by just buying two (a red and a white) bottles and trying yourself. Of course most red food dye the wrong color and you would probably taste it if you used that much... so just blindfold your self and try. The lack of tannins, malolactic fermentation, and often the lack of oak will make it pretty obvious they are different. It's like saying you can't taste the difference between a Guiness and a Bud, because you've never had them before? Maybe you don't know which is which with a blindfold on, but you can taste the difference.
    - dagw 3y ago
      To be fair, there exists white wines with tannins, oak and even light skin maceration which, if coloured red, could confuse some people inexperience with those types of whites.
      - kurthr 3y ago
        Certainly, Grenache comes to mind as a red varietal/preparation that could be confused with some whites. There aren't many common (cheap) white wines with much tannin, perhaps some heavy contact SavBlanc, but that nose is so distinctive that it would be hard to confuse? My point is mostly about the $3-10 wines which have pretty simple notes. They have very particular styles and relatively restricted grape varietals due to cost, availability, and customer expectations. I'm sure for the right money a good winemaker could take the right white grape and make it taste like a cheap red without the color (lots of skin contact, malolactic fermentation, heavy oak, and some age. On the other spectrum, I'm sure you could screw up and make any wine/grape so terrible you couldn't tell what it came from. There are also people who couldn't tell the difference between a pilsner and an ale, I suppose.
- berkle4455 3y ago
  > Its AMAZING that it seems like 99% of average people are convinced that they can taste the difference between red and white wine I'm not sure what sort of high-quality wine you drink, cause I drink cheap stuff, and I can 100% tell the difference between a pinot noir and pinot grigio. Red vs. white isn't a coke vs pepsi thing, it's a coke vs mountain dew.
- arp242 3y ago
  If you play a bunch of notes for me then I won't be able to identify them exactly either, and I might not even rank them correctly from high to low (especially when played on a variety of instruments) because I'm about as tonedeaf as they come. That doesn't mean I can't distinguish two songs, or that I can't like one song and dislike another. People may not be able to identify wine tastes very accurately, but that doesn't mean that "anyone telling you they can taste the difference, even between red and white wine, is lying". Obviously there are differences in taste between different wines, and that statement is so utterly bizarre and so obviously untrue it makes me wonder if you have ever tasted more than one bottle of wine.
- OJFord 3y ago
  That's complete nonsense, though obviously not 100% (I'm no sommelier) I could definitely identify some grapes blind (and then implicitly could tell you if it's red or white). And a master sommelier... well they can do that and then some. If I wasn't sure of the grape, sure I might not confidently say if it's red or white. Because other than visually that isn't really as big a deal as it naïvely seems? Wine doesn't taste 'red' or 'white' it has different flavours and some grapes are red and others are white, but that's really only a visual difference. (Ok fine some flavours or textures are so much more common in one vs the other that it might allow a solid guess of the colour even if you had no idea of the grape - 'minerally' or 'bready'/'yeasty' tasting/smelling is probably white; very tannic is probably red. But I think my point stands, it's pretty meaningless, and certainty will come from identifying something more specific, and then knowing what colour that is, to satisfy the naïve hater that thinks that's the most important trait.)
  - barelysurviving 3y ago
    White wine can also be made from red grapes.
    - OJFord 3y ago
      Sure, and maybe you do mean that in agreement, but doesn't that go to my point that the colour isn't really as relevant as someone who thinks it's all a scam and anyone who thinks they like wine is an idiot believes? And some are blends of both, but we'd call the result white or red according to what dominates. Champagne for example.
- Tommstein 3y ago
  > Anyone telling you they can taste the difference, even between red and white wine, is lying. Its AMAZING that it seems like 99% of average people are convinced that they can taste the difference between red and white wine but they cant. Bro, what? I hardly drink wine, and couldn't tell you whether a red wine is the finest red wine ever or the shittiest, and likewise for white wines, but I can absolutely tell you whether a wine is red or white. Don't know what the hell wines you're drinking.
- dagw 3y ago
  Anyone telling you they can taste the difference, even between red and white wine, is lying. There are competitions all around the world where you can go and literally watch people doing this in real time. Anybody can learn to fairly reliably identify 5-6 of most common grapes in a blind tasting with a bit of practice.

yumraj 3y ago

> they decided to go with the cheapest and worst-tasting one they could find. It’s interesting that one group found it worst tasting, while another found it exceptional. Looks like both suck, and maybe the wine was not the best but not the worst either. Just like the judges were duped into awarding this wine, the first group also thought this was worst tasting because it was the cheapest.

Daishiman 3y ago
The entire of the article is that the contest is a sham, not a comparative thing about the subjectivity of taste. Bad wine clearly stands out as bad. Bad wine doesn’t mean “wine you don’t like”. It means “technically flawed wine such that even if you liked this wine you would be very unlikely to prefer it to others in its category”.
dagw 3y ago
It's equally likely that they never really tasted the wine. They just read the faked lab report, tasting notes and recommendations and gave out the award. These competitions are pay-to-play so if they make it too hard to win, people will stop playing and they won't get paid.

BenjiWiebe 3y ago

Weird how they do it. We recently sent in some of our family farm cheese to a contest. The judges don't know the name of the cheese or see the labels. They just taste (/smell/feel/eyeball) the cheese and judge it. No judging of the back story.

Legend2440 3y ago
Why should they judge the backstory? Only the finished product matters, the rest is marketing.
- jc_811 3y ago
  In the article it mentions how the backstory was part of how they fooled the judges. OP is agreeing with your sentiment about how the backstory should be irrelevant
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WheelsAtLarge 3y ago

A while back I spoke to a winemaker who told me that her job was to make a wine that would match any of the price winning wines for less than $40 a bottle. They would buy the wines that won, analyze and match the flavor profile anyway they had to. She would blend wines from different areas and come up with the best flavor she could. Wine making is not what it used to be. At one time the difference between good wine and great wine was huge. Now with automation and know how it's possible to have great tasting wine be inexpensive. There's also the situation where winemakers sell their excess wine to bottlers so it's very possible that a great wine is sold cheaply simply because the wine maker needs to sell the excess inventory. This situation where a very cheap wine wins a contest is not surprising. The big difference is that the flavor of a more expensive wine is more consistent than one you buy very cheaply.

Stevvo 3y ago
A uniquely American take. Great wine for cheap has always existed in Europe. Before much of it started being exported to the USA, even more so.
- adamredwoods 3y ago
  This is what I was thinking, too. I can usually tell between cheap "jammy" wines from the US, which I don't like, versus the cheap Cotes du Rhone I buy, which tastes delicious.
Daishiman 3y ago
This is all possibly but it works to a limited extent; there are taste descriptors of aged wines, for example, that are impossible to imitate cheaply. All winemakers are capable of designing wines to a broad set of possible tastes with remarkably latitude, but money gets you way more options.
- noirbot 3y ago
  Yea, I feel like that's true of spirits as well. It's easier to get an acceptable Scotch or Rum than it used to be, but at some point, the cost to age something for 5, let alone 10 or 20 years just isn't something you can shortcut, and it produces different flavors. Not to say that a 10 year aged spirit is better than a younger one, but if you do like that flavor, then there's not much else you can do to get it.

rhaway84773 3y ago

This doesn’t seem like a particularly prestigious contest. It seems the people doing the “prank” intended to show that a lot of these contests are not legitimate and just an opportunity for the organizers to make some money. It would be interesting to see whether a legitimate contest that did blind taste tests would fall for such a trick.

OJFord 3y ago
Absolutely. The title alludes to the IWC which is at least a fairly prestigious award, and I couldn't have told you it stood for 'international wine challenge' before now, so frankly did think that's what it was. But that isn't where it won gold, it's something I've never heard of and the tasting isn't even blind (eye-catching label, etc.).

themiddleupper 3y ago

This seems to have been a prank to prove the contest was asham But in much more "authentic" contest, what determines if a wine is better than another? Are they not just different taste and liking them or not is a person's subjective opinion, similar to food preference?

friend_and_foe 3y ago
Its all a bunch of bullshit man.
- Daishiman 3y ago
  This is cope from people who don't want to admit the world has depth that takes skill and expertise to explore.
  - friend_and_foe 3y ago
    The world does, booze is booze. Sure, it's different, but all the lore is just marketing.
    - Daishiman 3y ago
      And cars are cars and reading is just reading, right?
andirk 3y ago
You, assuming you have no knowledge of wine, can absolutely tell the difference between truck stop $2.70 wine and a well made wine from a seasoned winemaker+vineyard+grapes+region. Yeah these awards are often hot air, but the claim that no one can tell the difference between well made wine and garbage wine is a joke. It's black and white, especially when you wake up the next day.
dagw 3y ago
There are certain more 'objective' criteria used to judge wines. In fact one of the things you learn when learning to taste and judge wine is to try to separate what you like from judging if it is a well made wine. A big one is complexity. Wines with a complex flavour profile (ie lots of different flavours) are generally judged as better than wines with a simple flavour profile. Another is length of finish. How long does a pleasant flavour linger in the mouth after swallowing. You can also judge how close the wine is to how a wine of that type is 'supposed' to taste, and how well the wine maker managed to achieve what they where trying to achieve. You might not particularly like Chianti, but you can still judge if the wine you are drinking is a really well made Chianti.

friend_and_foe 3y ago

So I make wine, and I do wine tastings and liquor tastings. The first thing to know, unless you're getting gut rot shit made from petroleum, is that all of it gets you drunk, which is what you're after. Wine, beer and liquor are lifestyle items. If they sold you this stuff on it's actual pitch you'd just grab the bottle closest to checkout and leave. So they have to differentiate themselves with lore, stories, stereotypes, whatever. But at the end of the day, it's all booze. What's the difference between a Jack Daniels drinker and a belvedere vodka drinker? How they view themselves, the type of person they want to portray themselves as and the stories the ads for the bottles tell. People will rationalize that they like it after thefact, and make all kinds of excuses to avoid admitting to themselves that it's vanity and they want to be seen doing it. Made 100% sustainably by an ancient family recipe triple distilled in copper pots using geothermal heat from a volcano in Nicaragua, its all a bunch of bullshit. Just get what tastes good to you and forget about the noise. I make wine, as a hobby. And I'll tell you, I'd rather drink my simple as hell fruit wine than any of that smoky shit the cute girl at the grocery store tries to sell me with samples. The entire wine tasting world is a sham, I don't mean most, all of it is a giant sham. And for those of you that do wine tastings and buy it, it's easier to fool someone than to convince them that they've been fooled. Just get what tastes good to you and forget about Tue noise.

jameshush 3y ago
Every human buys with emotion and then justifies with "logic" after the fact. I know this, and I still just paid thousands of dollars on a rock for my future wife's finger ;-).
- ksaj 3y ago
  You've made De Beers very happy. Just kidding. But try to resell it, and you'll notice a discrepancy that you've not seen in hardly any other product outside of NFTs. Diamonds may be forever, but their resale value sure isn't.
  - Spivak 3y ago
    Also they're kinda.. boring? Like visually appealing diamonds have become so commoditized you can buy them at grocery stores. Like it's not even a status symbol anymore in any sense of the word. You're the only person who will know if you have some super rare expensive diamond, we could play the game of "Is it Jared or Neil Lane?" most people won't do much better than flipping a coin. Assuming a ring is important to you the only things you really need is a metal that's sufficiently soft so it'll be comfortable to wear 24/7, won't rust, and (optionally) some stones you think look cool. My engagement ring is alexandrite and moonstone because I thought the color changing was cool. The reaction I get from people who see it is this weird combination of "wow that's so pretty" and "for some reason I don't think I'm allowed to do that for myself."

matteoraso 3y ago

Wine tasting is a great example of how stats can mislead people. People hear that sommeliers can't tell the difference between cheap wine and expensive wine, and come to the conclusion that sommeliers don't know what they're talking about. They aren't trying to guess the price, though, they're trying to explain and appraise the flavour. A better view of wine tasting is that high quality wines can be purchased at very good prices.

andirk 3y ago

To anyone who thinks even YOU, with no knowledge of wine, cannot tell bottom barrel gas station wine vs. wine made from experts who know what they're doing is a joke. I have personally had my friends BLIND taste test my favorite wines (~$80-$150/bottle) and garbage wine, and no one picks the garbage wine. Why? Because garbage wine doesn't taste very good. Yes, price points can be ridiculous. A $60 bottle can be better than $1,000 bottle EASILY, because a lot of it is name recognition, rarity, etc. and these medals means almost nothing. Look for brand, region, winemaker, etc. and you can repeat with success. Disclaimer: I'm fine with cheap wine (~$20/bottle) that's good, and I buy it often. Just like I don't eat at "Michelin Star" restaurants every day.

Incipient 3y ago
I don't think this article is saying that "gas station wine" tastes as good as "fancy wine". It's not talking about quality. They're making the point that cheap wine can be good. So yes junk wine is junk, but not all cheap wine is junk. I do however expect for this particular instance, they spent a lot of time finding a particularly wonderful €3 wine - while the vast majority at this price probably are distinctly less good.
- commoner 3y ago
  > I do however expect for this particular instance, they spent a lot of time finding a particularly wonderful €3 wine - while the vast majority at this price probably are distinctly less good. The article says the opposite: > There were plenty of wines under €3 to choose from, but they decided to go with the cheapest and worst-tasting one they could find. a €2.50 bottle was selected and then disguised it as a premium product by naming it ‘Chateau Colombier’ and creating a more eye-catching label.

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ameliaquining 3y ago

Re: the controversy about what's really going on here, here's an informal literature review from a writer I like: https://asteriskmag.com/issues/01/is-wine-fake https://asteriskmag.com/issues/01/is-wine-fake

HelixEndeavor 3y ago

Professional wine tasters are proven to be full of shit from top to bottom time and time again, and yet they still have careers, it's still a very wealthy industry, and people still give them the time of day. Pretty wild.

splonk 3y ago

Not to detract from the general point that most alcohol tasting medals are just marketing and not particularly scientific, but this article is kind of misleading. In a lot of alcohol tasting competitions (including Gilbert & Gaillard), the scale actually goes Double Gold, Gold, Silver, Bronze. A gold medal in itself doesn't actually mean what you might think it should (i.e., best in class), it's basically so you can sell stickers to put on bottles to fool buyers who don't know the specifics of how these competitions are scored. Broadly, I would interpret Double Gold as "might be good", Gold as "might not suck", and Silver/Bronze as "probably pretty bad since they're marketing their participation ribbons". An example from the spirits world: the San Francisco Spirits Competition has a 119 page list of results with medals (https://www.sfspiritscomp.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/2020-sfwsc-results-by-class.pdf https://www.sfspiritscomp.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/202...). There's maybe 1-2 Double Golds per page. GABF, the big beer festival, doesn't award Double Golds, but their categories are specific enough that they awarded 100 Gold medals last year. G&G has this wine listed on their site 3 times. I'm not sure which one is accurate, but the scores are from 85-88. Here's what wine-searcher (a big shopping portal/aggregator for wine) says about the distribution of G&G's ratings: "Gilbert & Gaillard's wine scores on Wine-Searcher: Score range: 85 – 100 points 50% fall between: 86 – 90 points Average score: 88.5 points" So basically, they rated it as below average on a scale that inflates ratings to the point where almost everything is marketable. Finally, according to G&G's rules, the wines are tasted blind. The article implies that they're not, but doesn't actually say it. "Prior to tasting, they [the wine samples] are placed in identical packaging that conceals their shape and guarantees anonymity." https://vigneron.gilbertgaillard.com/ruleChallenge/reglement-en.pdf https://vigneron.gilbertgaillard.com/ruleChallenge/reglement... I know nothing about this specific competition, but there's no real need to try to influence a nonblind judge given how the deck is already stacked.

huksley 3y ago

I think the most reasonable is to go for the grape variety you like and the price point you can afford. Wine is a hobby by itself, you can drink 6 months Pinot Noir, then switch to Malbec, then switch to something else. Plus you can travel on the budget from Chile, Australia, France, USA, Italy...

nemoniac 3y ago

So what was the $2.70 bottle of wine that they chose? We'd all like to taste it!

TradingPlaces 3y ago

Years ago, my wife and I went to a “make your own wine” thing in Napa. A few months later we had a blind tasting of our two wines, a $12 bottle of Kirkland Signature from Costco, and a $125 bottle. 6 tasters, and the unanimous result was for the Kirkland Signature. If you’re in Napa, check out the wine making thing. It’s lots of fun. https://www.conncreek.com/visit https://www.conncreek.com/visit

LargoLasskhyfv 3y ago

So much talk, without one mention, of the 'sonication of wine' (and spirits too!), the latest invention. I wonder why? Are you shy to confide, there is nothing to hide anymore? Except old-fashionedness. And distress, fear of loss and comfort-zone. The emperor, agein naked on the throne?