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Is wine fake?

asteriskmag.com

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Re: Is wine fake?

#141

Post by _8j50 »

I don't disagree but I do have a question about the blind tasting: Is it possible that knowing about a wine's age or provenance allows our brain to focus on and look for specific details? For example, you can feed me meat and I might think it is delicious but soon after if you tell me it is snake or dog meat I will vomit all over the place and find that particular taste offending.

Isn't taste just a signal interpreted by the brain?

I am sure you all have seen those experiments with a fake hand next to the person's but they are blocked from seeing their real hand, they start feeling touch and pain on the fake hand! Can taste also be visually and mentally affected by sight or some other knowledge?

Re: Is wine fake?

#142

Post by kuon »

My neighbor loves to organize wine tasting session with friends, one day, he opened some bottle, and when I poured it, I added some apple juice (about 50%) and nobody in the group noticed anything. I know that a few expert can actually tell wine apart and categorize them, but I now know that most of the time people have no idea :)

Re: Is wine fake?

#143

Post by IforgotmyID »

In my local supermarket in Spain, they sell wine in a carton (like milk) for around 80 cents of an euro per litre. It is perfectly nice if you want to drink a glass with lunch, mix it with gaseosa in summer (like Sprite) or cook with it.

They also sell cava for less than 5 euros a bottle. It makes a roast chicken on Sunday appear somewhat more festive. The first time a colleague in the UK told me about fruity or orange taste in wine I was completely perplexed as to what he meant.

Re: Is wine fake?

#144

Post by sebmellen »

The most interesting part of the article to me was this:

> Based on the theory of predictive coding, our brains first figure out what sensory stimuli should be, then see if there’s any way they can shoehorn actual stimuli to the the expected pattern. If they can’t, then the brain will just register the the real sensation, but as long as it’s pretty close they’ll just return the the prediction. For example, did you notice that the word “the” was duplicated three times in this paragraph? Your brain was expecting to read a single word “the,” just as it always has before, and when you’re reading quickly, the mild deviation from expected stimuli wasn’t enough to raise any alarms.

I believe Vsauce had a video on this topic one. I’ll edit the content if I find it.

Re: Is wine fake?

#145

Post by rfrey »

etempleton wrote: post #121

Wine is just fermented grapes. It is not magic. Expensive bottles of wine may be better on average, but largely just because they put in even more quality controls and so deliver a more consistent wine. It is not magnitudes of a difference. People talk about wine like it is magic or high art. That there is something deeper to understand. There really isn’t.

But grapes are not all the same: besides the taste of grapes varying depending on the soil, climate, orientation to the sun etc., there is also the judgement of when to harvest. Once in harvest season grapes can approach and then pass the desirable sugar level in a matter of days.

During the winemaking process there are many variables that cannot be codified from season to season because of variation in the grapes, such as increasing or decreasing acidity (and how), fermentation temperature, adjusting tannins, and probably more.

Re: Is wine fake?

#146

Post by barrkel »

noughtme wrote: post #132
2devnull wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wine makers can easily pick out flaws of different sorts. Wine tasters and wine makers do not taste wines in the same way based on my experience. Some flaws, like Bret, can improve the score of wines given by tasters for certain styles, but wine makers generally scoff at such flaws.

> Some flaws, like Bret I cannot wait for the current trend of brettanomyces contaminated "natural" wines to die.

Bret and the weird hay / mousey flavour from natural wines are different things.

I too am not a fan of natural wines largely because of the additional flavours, but normal sulphite-laden wine can come with a dose of bret and it's different - I particularly enjoy it in some Cote Rotie producers, where it comes out as a hint of smokey bacon.

Re: Is wine fake?

#147

Post by 13415 »

ravenstine wrote: post #95
13415 wrote: post #35

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.

The "fake" part is the idea that wines are objectively better than each other. Afficianados can invent their own standards, and that's fine, but those standards don't need to apply to people who simply want to enjoy wine. What muddies the water is that wine has an association with aristocracy that has never been had with Coke and Pepsi, or pizza with pineapple vs no pineapple. Sure, wine is more complex than many oth…

There is nothing fake about that either. You don't have to pass a blind test, you usually see the wine. It's the same with food - the presentation counts, too. Or with almost any kind of luxury good. Almost any brand is more expensive than "no name" products even though the production costs are the same.

Of course, people can be against luxury goods but the point is they're not getting it. People pay for brand and prestige, including some wine affiocionados (though not me). That's perfectly normal for luxury markets.

By the way, beer is way less complex than wine. It's not even remotely comparable, primarily because beers are "designed" by professional brewers for specific target markets. You can't do that as easily with wine, it depends more on the grapes, weather, and location.

Re: Is wine fake?

#148

Post by surement »

taneq wrote: post #91
surement wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just because you don't know how to appreciate well-made things doesn't mean that they're strictly ostentatious.

How’d you get ‘strictly’ from ‘mostly’?

added it in after reading my comment but not re-reading the parent

Re: Is wine fake?

#149

Post by mihaaly »

surement wrote: post #67
kube-system wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Above $60, you’re mostly paying for name, provenance, or prestige rather than taste.

Just because you don't know how to appreciate well-made things doesn't mean that they're strictly ostentatious.

I appears so that they talk about the sell price and not about how well it is made.

Re: Is wine fake?

#150

Post by csa »

2devnull wrote: post #117
csa wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 t…

“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.” I can’t believe that. I’ve never had barefoot and probably never will but there’s a lot of totally undrinkable, maybe even semi-poisonous, expensive wine. It’s not even rare. If you buy from a good merchant this is less of a problem bu…

> but there’s a lot of totally undrinkable, maybe even semi-poisonous, expensive wine

“A lot”? Really? Change your wine merchant if that’s the case.

That said, sure, I mean, if you want to include flawed wines like ones with brett, ones that haven’t been stored properly (e.g., in the sun), wines way past the their peak, etc., then one will certainly run into some bad wines at any price point.

That’s sort of a given, imho, and is in no way a reflection of the quality of the wine.

That certainly doesn’t in general make the high end wine “fake” or not worth a higher price (at least to some point), which is the point of the linked article.

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