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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)

#91

Post by watwut »

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #39
fbelzile wrote: post #34

Wine tasting is an art of deduction. The first step of any wine tasting is to look at the color, rim variation, legs, etc. From there, you take account the smell and taste. At a professional level, this is always done in a particular order to help narrow down possible characteristics for the next step. If you change the color of the wine, you'll send the wine taster down a completely different mental flow chart. The…

Reading that, I'm confused about the conclusion. The wine tasters were looking for flavors, and said they found them. If they weren't there, they should have said so. The inescapable conclusion is, the supposed differences between white and red wine are imaginary. They are not in the wine, but in the taster's head. In the 'mental flow chart', the chart they use to make up words about what they're tasting .

> The inescapable conclusion is, the supposed differences between white and red wine are imaginary.

You could conclude that only after blind test.

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

#93

Post by rectang »

trianglem wrote: post #84
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…

That’s like enjoying a diamond you overpaid for or an art forgery. Just because it makes you happy doesn’t mean you haven’t been swindled.

So, buy cheap wine and enjoy it without regrets! :)

I know, that's empty advice. Drinking expensive wine is usually about signalling social status; it's not really about taste.

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

#94

Post by barrkel »

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #42
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.

You are wrong.

I might have agreed with you 20 years ago, but I know better now.

Practice describing the flavours of the wine you drink, and your flavour memory and perception will improve over time. I generally drink a glass or two every evening, and it's usually a new wine, one I've never tasted before. I've written hundreds of tasting notes. One of the most interesting things to come out of this is finding out something later - e.g. a notable region or producer - and then correlating this with past notes. I noted things myself, over multiple samplings, which I later found - via experts - were expected attributes within the category.

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

#95

Post by ogre_codes »

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…

> Enjoy wine, or that Stradivarius recording, accepting that you might be fooling yourself.

Yes, but it's also good to be aware that there are limits to your perception and take advantage. The 80% rule definitely works here. I don't drink wine, but at least with beer, tequila, and coffee, there is a pretty obvious gap between the cheap/ low end stuff and the good stuff, but paying significantly more for higher end brands isn't worth it.

So focus on getting out of that low end category and really enjoy the good stuff because the supposed "great" high end stuff is rarely worth tripling what you pay (or more).

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

#96

Post by keiferski »

This has been debunked repeatedly, but since "we showed those snobs!" makes for good clickbait, it inevitably returns.

The studies listed never quite make it clear how "wine expert" is being defined. The one in this article says it used students, who clearly are not experts in any sense of the word. Other studies just handwave away the question and say, "We asked wine experts." If you dig into some of them, it turns out that the designated "wine experts" were really some people that took a weekend course on wine testing.

If you don't define your terms, your conclusions are not relevant.

Edit, just to add an example more amenable to the HN crowd. Imagine a research study asks CS students or recent coding camp graduates questions about programming and computer science. Would you take their answers as authoritative? Because that's pretty much what is happening here, except with wine.

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

#97

Post by fiddlerwoaroof »

ogre_codes wrote: post #95
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…

> Enjoy wine, or that Stradivarius recording, accepting that you might be fooling yourself. Yes, but it's also good to be aware that there are limits to your perception and take advantage. The 80% rule definitely works here. I don't drink wine, but at least with beer, tequila, and coffee, there is a pretty obvious gap between the cheap/ low end stuff and the good stuff, but paying significantly more for higher end br…

What I’ve found is that the difference between an $30 bottle of wine and a $8 bottle isn’t necessarily quality, it’s consistency: buying the same $8 bottle of wine 10 times can result in five great bottles and five so-so bottles, with a $30+ bottle, it’s more like 1% of the time you get a bad bottle. So, when I’m giving a present or planning a party, I tend to gravitate to the more expensive bottles because it makes the outcome more certain.

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

#98

Post by [deleted] »

fiddlerwoaroof wrote: post #97
ogre_codes wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Enjoy wine, or that Stradivarius recording, accepting that you might be fooling yourself. Yes, but it's also good to be aware that there are limits to your perception and take advantage. The 80% rule definitely works here. I don't drink wine, but at least with beer, tequila, and coffee, there is a pretty obvious gap between the cheap/ low end stuff and the good stuff, but paying significantly more for higher end br…

What I’ve found is that the difference between an $30 bottle of wine and a $8 bottle isn’t necessarily quality, it’s consistency: buying the same $8 bottle of wine 10 times can result in five great bottles and five so-so bottles, with a $30+ bottle, it’s more like 1% of the time you get a bad bottle. So, when I’m giving a present or planning a party, I tend to gravitate to the more expensive bottles because it makes…

[deleted]

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

#99

Post by ogre_codes »

fiddlerwoaroof wrote: post #97
ogre_codes wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Enjoy wine, or that Stradivarius recording, accepting that you might be fooling yourself. Yes, but it's also good to be aware that there are limits to your perception and take advantage. The 80% rule definitely works here. I don't drink wine, but at least with beer, tequila, and coffee, there is a pretty obvious gap between the cheap/ low end stuff and the good stuff, but paying significantly more for higher end br…

What I’ve found is that the difference between an $30 bottle of wine and a $8 bottle isn’t necessarily quality, it’s consistency: buying the same $8 bottle of wine 10 times can result in five great bottles and five so-so bottles, with a $30+ bottle, it’s more like 1% of the time you get a bad bottle. So, when I’m giving a present or planning a party, I tend to gravitate to the more expensive bottles because it makes…

Buying into the mid-range is fine. It's what I do with beer a tequila. Buying the $200 bottles is where I question the logic. Even the expert tasters struggle to differentiate between a good $20-30 bottle and a $400 bottle in double blind tests.

I don't drink Sanka or Coors, I just use good coffee beans and drink good local beer. I don't spend $200 on exotic coffee beans feral cats have shit out.

The only reason I put the $6 in parens for wine is because I don't drink wine and don't really know where the price point is for a solid mid-range wine is.

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

#100

Post by TazeTSchnitzel »

futevolei wrote: post #92

I remember drinking crystal pepsi back in the day and it being a total mind f*ck. A few times I swore I was drinking 7up. So I would like to pile on wine experts here but I don’t think this study proves they are idiots.

It didn't actually taste quite the same as normal Pepsi though, right? The desire to make it transparent necessitated removing the caramel colour, which also affected flavour. It also lacked caffeine, which is a pretty noticeable flavouring too.
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