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Is wine fake?

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Re: Is wine fake?

#181

Post by wwweston »

deadbunny wrote: post #83
wwweston wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you elaborate on this? I'm sure there's more to it and it could be great to know what some of the specifics are, but it also seems like someone who likes to cook is going to need to be present for a good restaurant

Think of the distance between "I like playing video games" and "I want to work for an AAA developer".

"I like playing video games" would be analogous to "I like dining out."

"I like making video games" would be analogous "I like to cook."

Of course "I like making video games" might not mean "I want to work for an AAA developer", but the reasons why would probably be different than those you wouldn't want to make a commercial indie title / open your own restaurant.

Re: Is wine fake?

#182

Post by barrkel »

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…

The most likely expensive dud you're going to see is aged Burgundy reds. Many don't make it.

Very old red wine (e.g. 30+ years), if it's not fortified or a dessert wine, is also not particularly pleasant. I've had some very famous Bordeaux from some celebrated 70s vintage, a sip from Hedonism Wines in London, and it was very much not worth it; more than anything else, it reminded me of clothes in an old person's closet.

On the other hand, the same day I had a sip of something sweet from the 19th century - like 1898 or something - from Crimea, and it wasn't bad. It wasn't great, but it wasn't bad or undrinkable either. Might have been related to these batches - https://quillandpad.com/2020/07/21/the-massandra-collection-...

Re: Is wine fake?

#183

Post by jules »

csa wrote: post #34
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…

> 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…

When eating a dish, I can usually identify the ingredients and spices by flavour, but different wines taste more or less the same to me. Some taste different, but I can't say that they taste significantly better than others. Spending $50 more on the food in a restaurant is going to make an enormously bigger difference than spending $50 more on wine. In fact, I find that not drinking wine at all usually makes for a better experience if the food is good, because the super strong flavour of wine destroys your ability to discern flavours on the next bite. Not all that different from putting hot sauce on all your food, in fact.

Re: Is wine fake?

#184

Post by extragood »

nier wrote: post #128
wmil wrote: post #112

Earlier 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?

I'd guess cost of labor is a major factor.

If you buy any California wine, for instance, it was picked by a migrant worker. Times haven't changed much since Grapes of Wrath, other than it's typically Latino workers rather than Dust Bowl refugees.

Re: Is wine fake?

#185

Post by CPLX »

antognini wrote: post #49

One 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…

I disagree. There’s a pretty stark difference between $50 wine and like genuine top quality wine.

The problem is that it’s just highly inconsistent for a variety of reasons, including the fact that even if you trust the label you have no idea if that 20 year old bottle was left in the sun for awhile, and so on. Plus there’s personal taste, etc.

So you can spend a lot and get something underwhelming. In short, it’s complicated.

With that said, having gone for a full day tasting at Mouton Rothschild, and a couple other similar spots like Caymus, Y’quem, etc, I can say with complete confidence that there’s a level of quality thats simply not going to be reached with $50 bottles.

Re: Is wine fake?

#186

Post by jojobas »

Barrin92 wrote: post #31

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…

Done that too. Scorecards could be sold to random number vendors. It looks like modern quality control leaves no such thing as "shitty wine" at all.

Re: Is wine fake?

#187

Post by rdevsrex »

I'm surprised that no one talks about how a certain wine makes you feel. Ever since I started partaking in cannabis, I've noticed that many of the labels describe the effects you are likely to experience.

Granted, wines aren't so different to reliably reproduce physical and mental effects, but maybe it's a new angle for marketing :)

Re: Is wine fake?

#188

Post by AS37 »

danielfoster wrote: post #166
nier wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yes. Ontario's production is less than 3% of California's.

Re: Is wine fake?

#189

Post by gt565k »

I've had some bad luck multiple times buying expensive wine that was on sale. i.e. mark down from $50-60 to $20-30... 2/3 times it was skunked.

Better off buying that $12-$15 bottle or getting the kirkland costco $8-10 bottles. Never had a bad one from those and they taste decent.

Re: Is wine fake?

#190

Post by zabzonk »

wwweston wrote: post #64
ramesh31 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

Can you elaborate on this? I'm sure there's more to it and it could be great to know what some of the specifics are, but it also seems like someone who likes to cook is going to need to be present for a good restaurant

read "kitchen confidential"
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