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How to get the wine you really want

economist.com

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Re: How to get the wine you really want

#101

Post by Singletoned »

CPLX wrote: post #25
lisper wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Was it the case that the Silver Oak bottle probably needed some time to open up? This was a long time ago so it's hard to say. But I've had plenty of reds that tasted great straight out of the bottle, so IMHO any wine that needs to "open up" is not as good as one that doesn't. Also, while it is absolutely true that the taste of a wine will change over the course of an evening, it's far from clear how much of this i…

> IMHO any wine that needs to "open up" is not as good as one that doesn't. Yikes. Gonna have to disagree with you on that. The effect of a wine being aerated/oxidized after being opened and/or decanted is obvious even to a casual wine drinker. > I now know plenty of wines that reliably taste great (to me) straight out of the gate and keep tasting great through the whole bottle even if I keep it for a couple of days…

I find it amazing that all restaurants open a fresh bottle of wine at your table, and never seem to offer a decanted bottle.

If I trust you to make my food in secret, out of sight, I trust you to open my wine in secret, out of sight.

Re: How to get the wine you really want

#102

Post by tomcam »

xorgar831 wrote: post #100
lisper wrote: post #3

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. 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…

I've found that over the past 20 years my taste in wine has gotten more particular, it's really more about how your palate changes over time. The expensive and famous wines aren't completely without merit however, and if you go off of the taste alone, well that's not really what wine is about either. :) Wine is also your company, the food, the smell of the earth (terroir), the balmy afternoon. But I've found I have h…

Wait… It isn't about the taste alone?

Re: How to get the wine you really want

#103

Post by munificent »

ythl wrote: post #92
munificent wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The very idea of forcing myself to "acquire the taste" for alcohol seems distasteful in itself. The logic of any acquired taste is simple: It takes a finite amount of effort to acquire the taste. In return, you get satisfaction for the acquired taste that is only bound by the length of your life. The sooner you acquire the taste, the longer you get to amortize the value. I've taught myself to enjoy damn near every…

> I've taught myself to enjoy damn near every food and drink out there and I am immensely glad that I have—I now inhabit a world filled with delights. Well yeah, when you have drugs to "teach" your brain how to enjoy something (i.e. "this flavor = feel goods"), it's not that hard. I always figure that having to aqcuire the taste of something via drugs is a warning sign that said thing is probably not good for your bo…

Who said anything about having to use drugs to acquire a taste?

Re: How to get the wine you really want

#104

Post by johan_larson »

baldfat wrote: post #29

I want a WINE that runs all the Windows programs in Windows without a hiccup (Adobe Suite included) but then again as a HACKER WINE means Wine Is Not an Emulator. https://www.winehq.org

But does WINE scale out smoothly?

Can you find staff who know how to work with WINE, once you land that fat VC series A check and are ready to hire?

And can anyone afford WINE in the Bay area, given the housing situation?

Re: How to get the wine you really want

#105

Post by xorgar831 »

tomcam wrote: post #102
xorgar831 wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've found that over the past 20 years my taste in wine has gotten more particular, it's really more about how your palate changes over time. The expensive and famous wines aren't completely without merit however, and if you go off of the taste alone, well that's not really what wine is about either. :) Wine is also your company, the food, the smell of the earth (terroir), the balmy afternoon. But I've found I have h…

Wait… It isn't about the taste alone?

No! That's sort of where this snobbishness comes from, the real wine culture isn't snobby... maybe even a mediocre wine turns to a great one in the right company. At least that's been my experience.

Re: How to get the wine you really want

#107

Post by greenshackle2 »

lisper wrote: post #3

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. 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…

I'm not a connoisseur at all but I like the Barefoot Pinot Grigio. I've tasted better whites but most cheap whites I've tried were worse.

Re: How to get the wine you really want

#108

Post by caf »

bambax wrote: post #40
dajohnson89 wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>so IMHO any wine that needs to "open up" is not as good as one that doesn't. I respectfully disagree. Basically I stick to cheap wines (for budget reasons), and my decanter will turn almost any unbearable red into acceptable. A newly opened red sometimes just needs to be smoothed out via air a bit -- at the extreme of things, if you leave a glass out overnight it will be flat (not to mention, the alcohol will have e…

> my decanter Myhrvold in Modernist Cuisine recommends to use a... blender. It really works ;-)

The Vinturi aerators are pretty good.

Re: How to get the wine you really want

#109

Post by ythl »

munificent wrote: post #103
ythl wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I've taught myself to enjoy damn near every food and drink out there and I am immensely glad that I have—I now inhabit a world filled with delights. Well yeah, when you have drugs to "teach" your brain how to enjoy something (i.e. "this flavor = feel goods"), it's not that hard. I always figure that having to aqcuire the taste of something via drugs is a warning sign that said thing is probably not good for your bo…

Who said anything about having to use drugs to acquire a taste?

Are there any acquired tastes that don't require some form of drug usage (alcohol, caffeine, nicotine, etc.)?

Re: How to get the wine you really want

#110

Post by swensel »

lisper wrote: post #28
berntb wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One thing you wrote made me curious: That good wine box -- will a wine box from another batch also impress as much? I assume one of the problems with the cheap stuff is the std deviation values? I might add that I got a Moldovan 2 bucks wine in a PET bottle this week and quite liked it. :-) (I prefer dry red Spanish that you almost have to chew (I think the English term i s "rich"?). I should probably just admit defe…

Actually one of the nice things about the mass-produced "plonk" is that it is very consistent. One bottle of Barefoot cab will taste pretty much the same as another, whereas with more expensive wines you get a lot more variation, particularly from year to year. (Wine snobs consider this a feature!) > vodka in espresso Whatever works! My wife likes vanilla vodka with olives, and raspberry martinis with a dash of tabas…

Barefoot and other mass produced wines are chemically treated. This is why they always taste the same. Variation from year to year is actually a good sign that what you're tasting is not just chemical flavoring.
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