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The Legendary Study That Embarrassed Wine Experts (2014)

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Re: The Legendary Study That Embarrassed Wine Experts (2014)

#41

Post by JoeAltmaier »

vagrantJin wrote: post #19
chiefalchemist wrote: post #14

> The research, later published in the journal Brain and Language, is now widely used to show why wine tasting is total BS. BS? Or simply subjective? Sure people are influenced by "experts", as humans when isn't that true? Fashion? Music? The list is endless. We want to believe we are autonomous and independent but more often we naturally conform to the norm around us. Third-party insights and guidance are why we sur…

I think the gripe with things like wine tasting is the "elitist" nature of it all. Tasting a lot of wines and beers either makes you an expert or a drunk or an expert drunk or drunk expert? Either way, theres no certainty that a drunk isn't an expert or vice versa.

Expert drunk. In Iowa wine and spirits are sold mostly my state-run stores. They record the interesting fact that 90% of their sales are to 10% of their customers. Which actually puts that 10% at 81X the money spent on alcohol vs the rest of the population. That's a lot.

Re: The Legendary Study That Embarrassed Wine Experts (2014)

#42

Post by JoeAltmaier »

chiefalchemist wrote: post #14

> The research, later published in the journal Brain and Language, is now widely used to show why wine tasting is total BS. BS? Or simply subjective? Sure people are influenced by "experts", as humans when isn't that true? Fashion? Music? The list is endless. We want to believe we are autonomous and independent but more often we naturally conform to the norm around us. Third-party insights and guidance are why we sur…

Wine tasters make strong claims, and love to point out what others are missing. Those claims are bunk.

If they simply said "That dress is marvelous! It looks great on you! I love the daring neckline!" we could all accept that as effusive enthusiasm.

But to pretend to have an entire lexicon, to write endless descriptive books about it, makes wine tasters an entire level of farce above anything else you care to name.

Re: The Legendary Study That Embarrassed Wine Experts (2014)

#43

Post by adonovan »

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #41
vagrantJin wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the gripe with things like wine tasting is the "elitist" nature of it all. Tasting a lot of wines and beers either makes you an expert or a drunk or an expert drunk or drunk expert? Either way, theres no certainty that a drunk isn't an expert or vice versa.

Expert drunk. In Iowa wine and spirits are sold mostly my state-run stores. They record the interesting fact that 90% of their sales are to 10% of their customers. Which actually puts that 10% at 81X the money spent on alcohol vs the rest of the population. That's a lot.

Exactly. The whole liquor industry would collapse overnight were it not for their hard-core alcoholic customers. But "Drink responsibly", everyone.

Re: The Legendary Study That Embarrassed Wine Experts (2014)

#44

Post by rectang »

I used to make a living as a mastering engineer, where the job description is to make many tiny changes near or even beyond the threshold of perception, which when summed may add up to a perceptible whole.

How to do this? It's simple: isolate and magnify. Zoom in to where your senses become reliable, make a change informed by your knowledge and experience which you predict will be beneficial, then zoom out. You don't need "golden ears" to be effective: you need an understanding of your tools and techniques and an appreciation for how they affect the gestalt.

The human perceptual mechanism is prone to illusion, and unreliable for measuring and comparing fine detail — that's not what it's for. You won't go wrong if you think of it as primarily designed by evolution to model and identify threats: to hear a twig snap while ignoring the wind blowing, to perceive that hint of unusual movement by something vaguely alligator-shaped in your peripheral vision while ignoring the waves.

Enjoy wine, or that Stradivarius recording, accepting that you might be fooling yourself. Even if you might be wrong about the wine or the Strad, you know for absolute certain whether it is making you happy! Leave it to the critics to claim perceptual accuracy they don't possess and to risk being exposed.

Re: The Legendary Study That Embarrassed Wine Experts (2014)

#45

Post by ta988 »

You cannot say a whole field is fake because of a single experiments on students of that field. Neither can you by looking at people using their diploma but lacking the real expertise. I know chemistry PhDs I would never let run even the simplest experiment... They still boast on social media that they are experts, same with people selling wine and lying to clients to make them believe the wine is good or taste like chocolate...

Re: The Legendary Study That Embarrassed Wine Experts (2014)

#46

Post by dazc »

arbitrage wrote: post #18
tasssko wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Novelty plays a part in this too.

So does the amount imbided in a single go. Sipping tastes different from drinking and gulping. If an 'expert' doesn't know that, and isn't controlling for those variances, then their opinion is not going to be terribly rigorous. Notably, Pepsi Cola made great use of these types of tricks for their advertising campaign re: "Take the Pepsi Challenge". Much of taste is more subtle and experiential than many realize.

I can't remember the reference but, from what I remember, the moral of the story from the 'Pepsi Challenge' was to disregard what people say they prefer the taste of and to pay intention instead to what people actually buy.

Re: The Legendary Study That Embarrassed Wine Experts (2014)

#47

Post by JoeAltmaier »

rectang wrote: post #44

I used to make a living as a mastering engineer, where the job description is to make many tiny changes near or even beyond the threshold of perception, which when summed may add up to a perceptible whole. How to do this? It's simple: isolate and magnify. Zoom in to where your senses become reliable, make a change informed by your knowledge and experience which you predict will be beneficial, then zoom out. You don't…

Sure. But lets have a good time mocking those deluded critics as well. That's good fun too!

Re: The Legendary Study That Embarrassed Wine Experts (2014)

#48

Post by ta988 »

ndnfjttkrk wrote: post #37

To me red wine tastes very differently from white wine. Am I fooling myself? Are they really indistinguishable? Is it possible that the experts were afraid of using white attributes for a red wine, like in social consensus experiments? Did anybody ran a test in the dark, where you cant see the wine at all?

This is how most degustations of flavors experiments in oenology schools are made these days. Dark glasses and red light.

Re: The Legendary Study That Embarrassed Wine Experts (2014)

#49

Post by JoeAltmaier »

ta988 wrote: post #45

You cannot say a whole field is fake because of a single experiments on students of that field. Neither can you by looking at people using their diploma but lacking the real expertise. I know chemistry PhDs I would never let run even the simplest experiment... They still boast on social media that they are experts, same with people selling wine and lying to clients to make them believe the wine is good or taste like…

But its such a profound failure, it warrants skepticism of the field. Or at least of schools that purport to teach a skill, then fail at that entirely.

Re: The Legendary Study That Embarrassed Wine Experts (2014)

#50

Post by JoeAltmaier »

thinkingkong wrote: post #3

Another somewhat famous study involved taking a cheap wine and an expensive wine and swapping the bottles. When people tasted the wines and the bottles were hidden, people accurately scored the wines. When the bottles were visible, people preferred the wine in the expensive bottle. All but the experts were susceptible to this effect.

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