I've had some incredible wines, but it is beyond fucked up that you can lay down $40 for a bottle of trash, and that is just OK. In what other industry is the quality so inconsistent?
Is wine fake?
161–170 of 559 posts
Re: Is wine fake?
#162One of my professors in grad school was really into wine and every couple of years he would put on an after-hours wine tasting class for a semester. One of the points he made was that there are absolutely wines which are objectively better and worse and that experts can reliably tell them apart. He had met enough experts who could identify a vineyard and vintage blind to know there was something to it. But sitting on…
> But unless you're seeking out that particular flavor profile
It's not just seeking out a particular flavor profile. If you want to experience something novel for your mouth and you've been drinking only $20 bottles for years, you will never encounter anything new. But if you try $100 bottles, you're much more likely to accidentally discover something new (whether you like it or not is subjective)
Continuously searching for new experiences is an expensive hobby.
Re: Is wine fake?
#163Earlier quoted context omitted.
Fair enough, maybe not the originallest, but some of the now hamburger chains started out as hot dog chains, of which there's one? left IIRC. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl%27s_Jr.#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hot_dog
Isn't present day Carl's Jr. just Hardee's by another name? Hardee's began as a burger joint as well. According to research from the University of Guelph, hotdogs are comparatively uncommon in fast food because hotdogs are harder to cook consistently and have a shorter window of enjoyability which makes them less suited to fast food than hamburgers.
Yeah, I was thinking of the ubiquity of "street food hot dogs" which are now basically gone (Costco still has hot dogs, however, and baseball stadiums are required to have hot dogs).
Re: Is wine fake?
#164A nice thoughtful piece on tasting wine. Under scrutiny, sensational conclusions typically fall apart and sometimes they really tell you more about the "experts" than about wine. Fortunately for me, I can enjoy wine at many different price-points. However, I usually find the bottles which move me the most are priced at $50+.
Re: Is wine fake?
#165It'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 tabl…
A fun variation on this is to provide two bottles. Cover the labels with sheets of paper.
Pour everyone a serving of each (different color cups works best), and tell them that one bottle costs less than $10, one costs $95.
The group will taste and discuss and usually reach a consensus on which wine is the better wine. Ask if anyone disagrees.
Then, you reveal that both bottles were filled with the same boxed wine. It's really funny.
I've done this 3 times, and never had anyone suggest that they were the same wine before the reveal.
Re: Is wine fake?
#166Earlier quoted context omitted.
> He was of the opinion that generally speaking the quality of a typical wine increases monotonically with price up until around the $40 range with the big steps around the $5, $10, and $20 price points. I'm always amused when I hear this, because I live in Ontario. Our alcohol laws are set up to heavily favour local wines. Of course Ontario reds are consistently both more expensive and worse than foreign wines. High…
How does red wine from Ontario end up more expensive than the one from abroad when the laws are set up to favor the wine from Ontario?
Without more information, I would assume that even with preferential tax treatment Ontario wine could be more expensive due to economies of scale. Production must be vastly lower compared to California, France, etc.
Re: Is wine fake?
#167[deleted]
Re: Is wine fake?
#168One of my professors in grad school was really into wine and every couple of years he would put on an after-hours wine tasting class for a semester. One of the points he made was that there are absolutely wines which are objectively better and worse and that experts can reliably tell them apart. He had met enough experts who could identify a vineyard and vintage blind to know there was something to it. But sitting on…
But, there is the usual trick there. How do you transform your wine from a $5 wine to a $10 wine? Raise the price by $5. The assumption of quality is something exploitable.
Re: Is wine fake?
#169All I know about wine is that it comes in a box.
A large plastic jug, actually.
Re: Is wine fake?
#170I'm surprised these sorts of articles still get traction? Is this just a filter bubble thing? Is it "new" to many people even though it isn't to me? Or do we just like to feel snobby about knowing the truth?
I think this piece is more of a reaction to the hackneyed articles we've all seen about how wine knowledge is all bs. It's a qualification of those conclusions that does a good job of explaining that the reality is a little more complicated.