Is wine fake?

> 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.

I think my professor meant "objective" in the sense that someone with a trained palate will agree with others who have a trained palate. I.e., they're not just saying, "well this tastes good to me." Experts are generally consistent between each other about what tastes good and what tastes bad.

Of course this doesn't necessarily mean that these preferences are objective in a God-given sense. And from what I could tell it does seem that different subcommunities have their own preferences. Californian wine tasters seem to prefer bigger and bolder flavors than French wine tasters, who like subtler flavors.

I'm pretty into wine, not in the industry though. But I've tried a lot of stuff (from garbo wines, to stuff like Rayas, Haut Brion, Romanee Conti, etc... some pretty heavy hitters), and I agree that money is not the driving factor. The economics are huge, like sometimes some small producer will just explode and their production is little... but the demand might be high and suddenly you're looking at a 10 euro bottle of wine, going for 120 euros. Lot's of times it's because they actually make something pretty remarkable, but sometimes not.

Having said that, I've seen some incredible stuff. There was a tasting were a friend brought a bottle with him, it was a blind tasting and everyone was supposed to write down what their bottles were. So my friend presented his bottle concealed in aluminum paper as we used to do, and he wrote down the bottle + vintage.

At the end of the night, notes were exchanged, and there was a very very strong taster in the group. It was burgundy night, and he nailed 4/5 wines (6 in total, but the one you brought didn't count), producer, wine, and vintage. My friend told him "you didn't guess the vintage of the one I brought", I don't remember but I think my friend thought that it was a 2008 and this guy said like 2009. When they revealed the bottles, the bottle was indeed a 2009 from the same producer. My friend had taken a different bottle from his cellar and he didn't realize :^). Some folks know what they're drinking very well indeed (5/5

I largely agree with you (and your prof) but I lose interest at about £25 but I will drop this:

A violin (1) can be played to produce two notes at once and a third note will be heard. Since around 1715 that extra, third note was noted and then thought to be an artifact of our ears or something. Recently someone got all scientific and studied the effect. It turns out all or most violins produce the third note but the oldest instruments produce a louder third note. More study needed.

There is a really dodgy analogy here but I can't help conflate a violin's "vintage" with a vin's (err ... wine's) vintage.

Sound and music is phenomenally complicated but quite well understood compared to taste although there is a lot of research and results coming up there. My point is that I don't think that the (say) £/$100 bottle of wine is quite in the same league as the mad cables, especially the digital ones that cost silly money. A £100,000 Strad is capable of making a different noise to your common or garden £10,000 violin.

For example, you note people capable of identifying a source and year for a wine because that's how we classify the stuff, along with some really awful attempts to put taste into words and of course you note the silly cable buyer equivalent. However, there are way more factors involved.

I also think the whole tasting thing needs a massive overhaul. Notes of peach and cut grass and all that bollocks is a bit unimaginative and frankly daft. I've never "drunk" grass, let alone cut grass - yes I understand that smell and taste are quite often synonymous but there is way more to it than that. I have eaten peaches but there is also a huge variety of flavours there that a wine buff overlooks - there is no such thing as a canonical "peach".

I'm not sure how it would work but perhaps we need a taste language that is not completely dependent on other tastes and smells. We might also need an analogy for volume too - mild and punchy are simply rubbish as a scale! I know that industry is churning out a vast number of clever flavours and smells but I think that the language is being left behind.

(1) https://www.newscientist.com/article/2344992-phantom-notes-p...

> I’ll make one more confession — sometimes I prefer pizza from the greasy pizza joint down the street to pizza with exotic cheeses from a fancy Italian restaurant that costs twice as much. Does this mean the fancy Italian restaurant is a fraud?

No, it means the original studies were right to have a sample large enough to account for one person who's taking a position they wouldn't normally take on that particular day! But what it doesn't do is invalidate the findings of the larger study.

PS: I got to the end of the article thinking the author hadn't made a very convincing case, then I saw that it was Scott Alexander, and my first reaction was "oh, he's smarter than me, I probably didn't read it carefully enough." So, I guess I'm like the lady at the Judgment of Paris who asked for her scorecard back.

You and your parents have all described wine in terms of $. I've tasted a dollar and it tastes like a pound but I would not try to drink it.

Why not describe your experience with the good stuff. We lack decent language to describe taste but we have loads of language for experience and feelings.

Lots of people here are pontificating (me too) about wine but so often the discussion ends up with bottle price and not what is actually important.