The "70% disappointed" figure has nothing to do with anything but the fact that 95% of UK restaurants and pubs sell appalling wine. A merlot is a merlot, but if you can only order shit merlot you'll be disappointed regardless.
How to get the wine you really want
61–70 of 164 posts
Re: How to get the wine you really want
#62Not a fan of wine in general, it's too sweet. Even the dry ones.
Poe's law strikes again. I honestly can't tell if this is satire. Entertaining either way on several levels.
Re: How to get the wine you really want
#63Re: How to get the wine you really want
#64Earlier quoted context omitted.
A good friend of mine is actually a food/wine critic. He has said (and I think this applies to all good critics) that there's nothing special about the tastes of a critic. Some people may be more sensitive than others but critics are pretty much in the same population as the rest of us. The difference between a good critic and someone flapping their gums on Yelp is the ability TO WRITE something worthwhile about the…
I don't fully buy this. I expect my chosen jazz critic to be knowledgeable, like, a lot. Same for food and wine. I want to read the words of someone who has eaten on more places, more foods and more flavors than me, not less. Your friend might be too humble.
But even then, they're not any better at 'tasting well'. You don't have to care about the fancy properties of the wine, just whether it tastes good to you.
Re: How to get the wine you really want
#65Earlier quoted context omitted.
i wonder if it's the same for whiskeys or really any alchohol.
Yes, absolutely. Since the infamous cab tasting we've done blind tastings of spirits with similar results. Our favorite vodka, for example, turns out to be Seagrams Extra Smooth, which is about half the price of a "high end" vodka. Unfortunately, it doesn't always turn out that way. My favorite scotch turns out to be Lagavulin or Laphroaig -- I really like the smokey flavor of Islay malts -- both of which are rather…
Well, of course it doesn't work for vodka. The definition of vodka is to be odorless and flavorless. "High end" vodka is almost literally a scam. (Read up on the founding of Grey Goose... the business plan was basically "Hey, I bet if we charge way too much for vodka we can get gullible Americans to pay it!")
Re: How to get the wine you really want
#66Twenty years ago I was a tea-totaller, but there was a group of people I wanted to hang out with who would get together to drink wine so I decided to try to develop a taste for it. I eventually got to be a pretty hard-core wine snob. My wife and I even ran a wine-tasting group for several years. Then one day we decided to start doing blind tastings, and we soon learned that there was very little correlation between w…
> Find what you like and drink that, and don't pay attention to anything that anyone else says.
This is of course the right approach to most things in life. But just because "to each their own", that doesn't imply there aren't real complexities and nuances in foods that exist only in more expensive things.
Take for example someone who eats fast food burgers every day and try to take them to eat sushi. They just won't like it.
In the case of wine (heh), sure different palates like different wines. But I think a lot of people take that and jump to the conclusion that "all wines are the same, the only difference is the palates". I don't think the conclusion is true.
Re: How to get the wine you really want
#67Most wine I have in a restaurant is good. If they do a good job picking wines there shouldn't be a problem and you should trust their staff. If they don't have good wine selection I guess you could get a glass of wine from this thing, but it's probably a better idea to get something they do a good job of selecting. After all not much sense in trying to find the best wine in a beer bar.
If they don't do a good job selecting things then why are you there?!
Re: How to get the wine you really want
#68Earlier quoted context omitted.
Honest question. Your example of the external conditions that enable the 34 year old wine to shine. How does that work with the wine? In other words, if I substitute the cheap modern wine that otherwise won in the blind taste test, what happens differently in the setting you describe?
Simple example; I used the whole day to prepare a strong wild boar stew and that will be a perfect pairing for a very strong wine, possibly old. If you bring a light wine of the year to that table it will get diluted on the strong flavors of the stew. We might have a good night but the wine won't shine.
It seems like you are saying that the wine's qualities and how they pair with the food are very important. I don't think anyone would disagree.
The question at hand is whether a cheap/expensive wine, of the same type, would matter in the boar stew example.
Personally, I have no reason to believe that a more expensive wine would only shine under these types of conditions. I also think it's a matter of subjective taste, and there is no arguing matters of taste ;).
From the non-oenophile POV, my objection is the pretension of objectivity. "This wine is better than the other one" is a subjective statement masquerading as an objective one.
Re: How to get the wine you really want
#69Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Twenty years ago I was a tea-totaller, but there was a group of people I wanted to hang out with who would get together to drink wine so I decided to try to develop a taste for it. Could you go into a bit more detail on this? The very idea of forcing myself to "acquire the taste" for alcohol seems distasteful in itself. I've got additional reasons for choosing not to do so, but I'd be interested to hear another poi…
no one(maybe some) likes alcohol the first time. one must acquire a taste for it. that doesn't mean it's not worth it. scotch was so disgusting to me the first time i had it and now it's one of the great pleasures in my life.
Adding to this - half of developing a taste for scotch is developing the skill of tasting scotch. Which is to say, take smaller sips. I've personally found that 80% or so of people who say they don't like scotch will enjoy a good scotch if they can be convinced to take a sufficiently small sip. Agreed, one of the great pleasures in life!
Re: How to get the wine you really want
#70Earlier quoted context omitted.
A good friend of mine is actually a food/wine critic. He has said (and I think this applies to all good critics) that there's nothing special about the tastes of a critic. Some people may be more sensitive than others but critics are pretty much in the same population as the rest of us. The difference between a good critic and someone flapping their gums on Yelp is the ability TO WRITE something worthwhile about the…
I don't fully buy this. I expect my chosen jazz critic to be knowledgeable, like, a lot. Same for food and wine. I want to read the words of someone who has eaten on more places, more foods and more flavors than me, not less. Your friend might be too humble.
I'm not saying that experience or background isn't important for a critic. I am just saying that they're NOT extraordinarily sensitive. They taste the same things we do, but they're able to pay attention and then put that experience into compelling words.