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Is wine fake?

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Re: Is wine fake?

#71

Post by School-Cotton »

ramesh31 wrote: post #44
gspencley wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There have been a lot of blind wine tastings done and the results are always interesting. Sometimes cheap bottles score as high, or higher than vintages. Other times people can spot the cheap "carton" wine easily. My wife and I love to cook, have discussed opening our own restaurant, have eaten at lots of very expensive "haute cuisine" restaurants and have tasted lots of wines. Part of the "problem" is that taste is…

>My wife and I love to cook, have discussed opening our own restaurant, have eaten at lots of very expensive "haute cuisine" restaurants and have tasted lots of wines. Please don’t make the mistake of thinking “I like to cook” means “I would like to run a restaraunt”. They’re two completely different things.

Indeed they’re different things, but they’re surely at least correlated. (A workaholic personality is probably more strongly correlated)

Re: Is wine fake?

#72

Post by VBprogrammer »

m463 wrote: post #40
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 o…

I've little doubt that when smell was an important part of finding and identifying food people would have better trained senses. Whether a kit from Amazon can enhance your sense of smell, not sure. Certainly not without spending a lot of time with it.

Re: Is wine fake?

#73

Post by hoherd »

doubled112 wrote: post #39
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.

That's what we have PG&E for: Peaty Grapes and Ethanol.

Re: Is wine fake?

#74

Post by surement »

Stratoscope wrote: post #27
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…

I roast my own coffee and buy most of my green beans from Sweet Maria's. Maria's husband Tom writes the tasting notes for each variety, such as... Rwanda Dry Process Macuba "Berry notes, floral impression, ripe blackberry, blueberry, fruited acidity, darker roasts tie in delicious bittersweet undertones, like strawberries dipped in chocolate sauce." Yemen Al Qafr Hawari "Sweet, somewhat rustic, notes of pistachio coo…

> I swear (even though I know I'm wrong) that he just makes this stuff up.

I don't know if this in particular is made up or not. But tasting notes, especially of the marketing kind, can be a collection of notes from different preparation methods, consumption temperatures, and, most likely, from being drank next to other coffees that taste different and might bring out each other's individual accents.

Re: Is wine fake?

#75

Post by bergenty »

jahsome wrote: post #58
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.

You may find you like peaty single malt scotches.

I once asked for a very smoky whisky and was bought out something completely clear.

Re: Is wine fake?

#76

Post by ineptech »

Havoc wrote: post #19
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…

>notes of blue I'm so stealing that

It's a running joke in my circle to describe the taste of any expensive wine, beer or coffee as, "strident, yet insouciant."

Re: Is wine fake?

#77

Post by bitxbitxbitcoin »

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…

Those quotes made me laugh and reminded me heavily of weed reviews.

Fun tidbit - The difference in aroma, appearance, flavor, and experience of a $9 eighth of cannabis versus a $900 eighth of cannabis would likely be noticeable even to an amateur.

You don’t necessarily need to be a Ganjier[0] to tell.

Efforts to homogenize it and remove labeling do serve to remove brand bias which is why it is standard now at cannabis cups - but still the quality shines through - literally sometimes.

But when it gets down to reviews and describing experiences we are all limited by the English language.

Some quotes from my own reviews:

“The insides almost looked like the outside of a banana slug. That kind of yellow.”[1]

“Beyond the citrus notes, the smell is definitely honeydew to me, not cantaloupe.”[2]

[0] https://ganjier.com [1] https://thehighestcritic.com/reviews/cultivar-review-pleazur... [2] https://thehighestcritic.com/reviews/strain-review-melonade-...

Re: Is wine fake?

#78

Post by femto »

It's fun to do a "blind tasting party".

Get a bunch of friends to each bring a bottle. Maybe give a criteria, like a price range, so people don't feel obliged to impress with the price tag.

All bottles are delivered to the kitchen at the beginning of the night, where the host puts each in a numbered paper bag. Each attendee gets a score sheet.

Start serving, either by pouring or just putting a few bottles on the table at a time. It's a normal party, apart from each person giving each numbered wine a score, and conversation about the wine being an icebreaker.

At the end of the night total up the scores and reveal the bottles, generally to some hilarity.

It's fun to throw in a few wildcards. As the host, I threw in a couple of extra bottles: one well above the price range and another the cheapest I could find. (Found out after the event that an attendee also decanted a box into a bottle. All in the spirit!). I also poured all the left over bits from each bottle (not glasses!) into a bottle and served that up towards the end of the night.

The cheap wildcard came second. The dregs came middle of the pack and the expensive bottle came below the dregs. It was a fun night and the guessing game really got people talking about what they liked and disliked, but they couldn't be pompous about it, unless they wanted to risk a ribbing at the end of the night.

It also works with beers or homebrew.

Re: Is wine fake?

#79

Post by rufus_foreman »

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…

"a hint of rotting grapes, notes of a bar fight"

Re: Is wine fake?

#80

Post by WaxProlix »

NoboruWataya wrote: post #68
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…

I have gotten fairly into coffee but I struggle to independently pick up these subtle notes. I'll take a sip, struggle to put any concrete words on the taste, and then read the tasting notes and (honestly) think "ah of course, yes I definitely get that". But I'm sure it's all just the power of suggestion. (An exception is some Ethiopian beans which have an unmistakable blueberry aroma and taste that they are famous f…

It might be useful to you - it definitely was for me - to get a few french presses of strikingly different coffees that are 'emblematic' of certain flavor profiles. This was a long time ago, so I just used Starbucks blends (sorry current me) but you could certainly do something even more telling nowadays. So you'd get a yergachiffe that was definitely blueberry, but then a slightly different Ethiopian bean that's very lemony, and some Arabian style Indonesian beans for Spice characters, a Guatemalan or something for nuttiness, etc.
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