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Is wine fake?

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Re: Is wine fake?

#301

Post by CharlesW »

analog31 wrote: post #276
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 have sometimes speculated that the purpose of the $50 bottles is to make you think that you're being sensible by buying a $20 bottle, when really the $10 bottle is just fine. A few people will certainly buy the $50 bottle, but the real money is in upsale at the lower end.

In case you haven’t heard the term before, what you’re describing is called “anchoring”: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anchoring_(cognitive_bias)

Re: Is wine fake?

#303

Post by moehm »

TulliusCicero wrote: post #258
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…

> 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. How does this jive with the studies showing that, if anything, regular people have a slight preference for cheaper wines?

"Quality" is a loose term, preference is totally subjective. Most people mix those things up, but there aren't equal. You don't automatically like the "better" wine, or better food. But the trend is the more people know about X (where X = wine in this case), they like "better" X. Where "better" and "quality" has to be defined first.

Typically, if you go down the path of wine education, you first learn a definition of what makes a wine good. WSET [0] e.g. mentions balance, complexity, faults, finish etc as part of what makes a wine "good" (by their definition). If you want to be certified by WSET (Level 3), you have to pass a tasting exam, where you have to examine wines according to their scheme.

Regular people aren't trained in wine or sensory evaluation, thus "quality" means less to them and cheaper wines are often easier to drink, or people are more familiar with them so they like them more (see "mere-exposure effect" [1]).

tl;dr: Liking a wine != the wine is "good". But mixing up those two things make no sense.

[0] https://www.wsetglobal.com/

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mere-exposure_effect

Re: Is wine fake?

#304

Post by bnralt »

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…

> 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 top of that there is a frothy market that is driven by fads, speculation, and hype.

I'm sure there are people that can identify different tastes. I question whether or not those tastes are a sign of objective quality, or just something they've been conditioned to think of as good.

An interesting test would be of people who have never tasted wine before, and have no sense of what a "good wine" is supposed to taste like. But in my experience, most people who aren't used to alcohol will simply find all wine distasteful.

You can actually see this in action when you see different cultures interact. For instance, the baijiu has a similar position in Chinese society as wine does in the West. There's an enormous price range, and a complex range of flavors and aromas. But almost every Westerner I've met found the taste abhorrent when they first tried it (though a small few eventually were able to develop a taste for it).

So though people in different cultures can acclimate themselves to what is currently considered to be good in their culture, I don't think that's the same thing as a certain taste being objectively good.

Re: Is wine fake?

#305

Post by jmccaf »

cmrdporcupine wrote: post #277
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?

This is a topic I know a lot about, because I have grown grapes here in southern Ontario for years and have looked a lot into the wine industry here and am generally an "enthusiast" about the topic. Part of the reason is just the retail environment, which is a whole cluster of a topic here, but I won't get into that... Because of... history and culture, Ontario "VQA" wine regulations demand that growers grow almost e…

As a Finger Lakes, NY alumnus, I appreciate the respectful comparison to our regional vintage. Reportedly the moderated microclimate of the region due to lakes, and the glacial soil terroir are good combination. Cornells agricultural school also researches experimental varietals.

My NY family puts as much pride in the local apples and the summer sweet corn as the regional wine.

Re: Is wine fake?

#306

Post by qaq »

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…

It would depend on wines you like. I am fine drinking $12 new zealand sauvignon blanc but can't say I've had anything in $40 range that I liked as much as Montrachet.

Re: Is wine fake?

#307

Post by doublepg23 »

lisper wrote: post #59

As someone who ran a wine-tasting group for several years I can tell you this: there are definitely discernible differences between wines. What there is not, however, is any kind of absolute standard for what constitutes a "good" wine. Different people like different things. There are two things that makes wines expensive, and neither of them necessarily correlates with whether a particular wine will taste good to yo…

> the ability to take someone's description of what they like and match it to what's on their wine list

Absolutely, I worked in a wine store for years and it was always awesome having a customer come back and buy more bottles of something I recommended.

> What there is not, however, is any kind of absolute standard for what constitutes a "good" wine. Different people like different things.

This is me with Eastern U.S. wines. I understand that conventional wisdom poo-poos Vitis labrusca (even though it saved European wine!) but I do love foxy wines from that region.

Re: Is wine fake?

#308

Post by 2muchcoffeeman »

Bayart wrote: post #205
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…

It's common wisdom in France. If you're paying more than 20 euros for a bottle, it's probably already too much. And it's very common for people to buy in bulk at the favour of seasonal discounts or from the producer. If you want to look smart at a dinner party, bring a bottle of something nobody's ever heard about that's remarkably cheap for what you get.

I normally only drink beer but the guy at the bottle shop knows me. He recommended a wine to me the other day, $10. He was right. I grabbed a case for $8 a bottle.

Re: Is wine fake?

#309

Post by javiramos »

School-Cotton wrote: post #294
Bayart wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's common wisdom in France. If you're paying more than 20 euros for a bottle, it's probably already too much. And it's very common for people to buy in bulk at the favour of seasonal discounts or from the producer. If you want to look smart at a dinner party, bring a bottle of something nobody's ever heard about that's remarkably cheap for what you get.

Wine is far more expensive in the US than in France, for various reasons.

Curious — What are the reasons?

Re: Is wine fake?

#310

Post by tptacek »

anononaut wrote: post #61

I've heard similarly for years, especially from a sommelier. What I've always wondered is if the same holds true for fine teas, whiskeys, and coffees.

It depends on what "true" means. That there are diminishing returns to investments over a threshold? That's probably true of all these luxury goods. Past a certain point in whiskey, you're not necessarily paying for "better" so much as chasing some interesting distinction (a particular sherry note, an especially punchy cereal flavor in a high-proof bottling, &c). In each category of whiskey, there is a satisficing price point, and serious whiskey drinkers would (perhaps unlike wine drinkers) pretty uniformly tell you not to depart that price point without a good reason to.
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