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Is wine fake?

asteriskmag.com

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Re: Is wine fake?

#31

Post by Barrin92 »

I've done this experiment with friends a few times. Personal experience. Almost anyone can tell really shitty wine from the rest, think your one or two bucks cardboard container wine. Almost nobody can tell a 10 euro bottle from a 100 euro bottle.

This also goes for other food and drinks. It's the same with coffee. You can taste really cheap and awful coffee, but if anyone can tell me they can reliably differentiate between decent beans and one of those fancy "it was fermented and digested by a monkey" specialty brands I'm scpetical.

Re: Is wine fake?

#32

Post by TremendousJudge »

bell-cot wrote: post #11

Is there anything which involves both... (1) lots of subtle and subjective judgement calls (2) humans yearning to show off their wealth / sophistication / status ...which is NOT fake or widely-faked?

Text editor choice. Those are definitely, completely, for sure real.

Re: Is wine fake?

#33

Post by alistairSH »

sbf501 wrote: post #14

TL;DR -- "Wine is not fake. Wine experts aren’t fake either, but they believe some strange things, are far from infallible, and need challenges and blinded trials to be kept honest. How far beyond wine you want to apply this is left as an exercise for the reader." It is a showoff sport. Insane wine prices are there for rich people who have too much money to spend, or people who are in desperate need of validation. We…

Yeah, there's definitely some learned skill in IDing wines by region/variety.

My "system" for picking wines has two approaches: - Buy Trader Joe's Reserve in a variety I enjoy - Visit local wine shop, tell them my budget and what I'm eating for dinner, and buy whatever they suggest

Both approaches yield pretty good results for not much money.

I'll leave "risking" the $5 bottles from Safeway to somebody else. The $10-$30 bottles I get are consistently good enough, and often better than good enough.

Re: Is wine fake?

#34

Post by csa »

metadat wrote: post #4
noodlesUK wrote: post #3

I am no wine guru but I do know one thing for sure. There is definitely such a thing as bad wine. If paying a little more would guarantee not having a terrible bottle, that would make me pretty happy. In the real world I've not found that to be true though.

The thing is, wine "quality" is entirely subjective. I've not found much correlation between price and whether I will like it or not. The only safe bet is that if it tastes too strongly of vinegar, probably people won't like it as much. But some European wines (Spain and Italy) intentionally produce wine with a non-negligible amount of vinegar taste. I know of a single maker that only puts out wines that I consider g…

> a $6 bottle of Barefoot can be just as good or better than $50 or $300 bottles of swill

As someone who has blind tasted many wines…

- I can see not being able to tell a difference between $50 bottles and $300 bottles, and even preferring the less expensive option. Some of the tastes can be very subtle, and sometimes the more expensive wines need to be cellared before they really start to shine.

- I honestly don’t think I have ever had a $50 plus bottle of wine that I would not have preferred over Barefoot, which has approximately zero taste markers of a wine made to taste good.

- There are inexpensive wines (sub-$8) that can hold their own versus $20-30 bottles, but that almost always involves generous use of oak chips and an audience that doesn’t mind the imbalanced flavor profile. Most people don’t mind the imbalance, especially since the wines are usually inexpensive, high alcohol, and taste better than wine at a similar price point.

- Folks who can’t differentiate wine taste may be “non-tasters”. I dislike this term of art, but it’s folks who have fewer taste buds per unit area of their tongue. Tell-tale signs are people who salt everything and/or use hot sauce to an extreme level.

- For folks on a budget who want to drink decent wine, Trader Joe’s Reserve wines ~$10 a bottle) punch way above their weight. These are basically $20-30 retail bottles of wine that needed to be cleared at the winery cellars quickly to make space for a new vintage. “Shiners” is the term of art for these bottles pre-labeling.

Re: Is wine fake?

#35

Post by 13415 »

I learned to appreciate wines only after I moved to a wine producing country (Portugal). I cook once a week for my girlfriend and try to choose a different wine each time. After a few years you learn a bit, which ones you like and dislike, and how different wines are. It's a lot of fun. There is nothing fake about it.

Re: Is wine fake?

#36

Post by ChrisMarshallNY »

I have not partaken, for some time, and when I did, I was an aficionado of such fine vintages as Mogen David 20/20, Night Train Express, and Thunderbird.

However, I have friends that are very much into it, and will happily spend sick amounts of money on bottles of what to me, is just spoiled grape juice.

Re: Is wine fake?

#37

Post by fullshark »

metadat wrote: post #29
fullshark wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd be shocked if you thought there's was actually no correlation if you're thinking of a price range from $5 to $100+. The worst wines by far I've had have been the ultra cheap stuff. Once you get above like $20 or whatever your personal threshold is though the variance is much smaller in terms of quality I'd say.

You do make a good point; the worst of the worst tend to be the ultra cheapies. With that said, there are unbounded arrays of cheap and expensive selections that all taste like shit (again, in my opinion - others likely perceive them differently). I've met plenty of people who happily drink something I consider 100% not palatable or suitable for human consumption.

Yeah bad (as in unappealing to my palate) expensive wines are bad in an entirely different unique, "expensive tasting" way.

Re: Is wine fake?

#38

Post by metadat »

sbf501 wrote: post #21
metadat wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing is, wine "quality" is entirely subjective. I've not found much correlation between price and whether I will like it or not. The only safe bet is that if it tastes too strongly of vinegar, probably people won't like it as much. But some European wines (Spain and Italy) intentionally produce wine with a non-negligible amount of vinegar taste. I know of a single maker that only puts out wines that I consider g…

> The thing is, wine quality is entirely subjective. The article says it isn't. And I agree. Go buy a two-buck chuck at Trader Joe's, and a $50 Chateauneuf de Pape from 2018. One is an acrid, acidic fruit punch, the other is a balanced soft tannin delight. I guarantee your palette can tell the difference, or your money back. :)

Agreed, they have different qualities. Still, characteristics don't automatically translate to people preferring the expensive one because it's "better", it's only "different". Individual taste preferences introduce a high degree of variance.

Re: Is wine fake?

#39

Post by doubled112 »

e10jc wrote: post #9

I've had a lot of red wine in my life; like, probably too much. The only bottle with a memorable taste came from a wine tour in Napa Valley where they said half the field was destroyed in a fire, so they were getting rid of the rest for cheap. The wine was super smoky... and absolutely delicious. I wonder why that never became a thing.

Probably difficult and expensive to consistently burn the field down.

Re: Is wine fake?

#40

Post by m463 »

lkrubner wrote: post #2

I worked at WineSpectator.com in 2012-2013. I'll say this in their favor: the wine tastings were blind. A bunch of interns would set up the wine tasting, pouring the wine into glasses and then hiding the bottles. Only after everything was setup were the editors allowed into the room. So when the editors drank the wine, they had no idea if they were drinking a $9 bottle or a $900 bottle. They had to focus on the taste…

During covid a friend tried a "smell training" kit from amazon and I bought one too. (pretty fun, with rose, lemon, eucalyptus and clove)

basically, some essential oils of one smell at a time.

Looking at more extensive smell kits, there is a huge jump in price if you get a "master wine aroma kit". They can have many many scents.

It might just be putting names to smells, but I also wonder if you can actually develop or enhance your sense of smell (and therefore the aromatic parts of taste)?

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