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Is wine fake?

asteriskmag.com

411–420 of 559 posts

Re: Is wine fake?

#411

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What happens if I buy a 2022 wine today and store it for 5 years? Will it be the same as buying the same vintage in 2027 from the wine seller? I guess what I'm asking is if there's some special storage requirements which can't be met at home?

Not all wines are the same! Some can benefit from aging but not all. The whole idea of "sealing" wine in a bottle is to keep it and not actually change it. It's a preservation method. However, the bottle is not really completely sealed and the small air gap at the top is not empty either. The cork might allow a tiny amount of air transfer too. The remains of the wine creation process might also leave some reactive co…

Haha. Rewinding back to my university days, I had picked up what I thought was a very nice bottle of Beaujolais. I put it above my fridge... and fast forward, opened it with my Bride of 20 years. Pure vinegar. I suspect that bottle had just about everything wrong done to it storage wise, outside of freezing solid.

Re: Is wine fake?

#412
post #2

I worked at WineSpectator.com in 2012-2013. I'll say this in their favor: the wine tastings were blind. A bunch of interns would set up the wine tasting, pouring the wine into glasses and then hiding the bottles. Only after everything was setup were the editors allowed into the room. So when the editors drank the wine, they had no idea if they were drinking a $9 bottle or a $900 bottle. They had to focus on the taste…

There probably are objectively 4 categories of wine that pretty much everybody will agree with when given a blind test: bad - wine that actually has gone bad (skunked, turned to vinegar or some other faul) low-quality - jug wine (high sugar and/or extremely high acidity and/or strong ethanol flavor) average/meh - the wine is drinkable and nothing stands out good wine - the wine hits all the key traits of its varietal…

I agree with your classification (you can add "high quantity of sulfites" to low-quality. Those taste like the headache you’re going to get on the next day.)

Also while price doesn’t predict which category you are, it’s hard to find a very cheap good wine. You have to either know your stuff, or buy something more expensive

Re: Is wine fake?

#413
post #387

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would personally put many things such as coffee and beer there - I've grown in cultures that have and consume them a LOT, but I'm 45 and still hate the taste of both. Acquired taste one way or another, and I never bothered acquiring it. (Interestingly enough though, two of my buddies also never had a taste for them, until in their late 20s they literally decided to "get into it". Boggles my mind if you're not caffe…

I deliberately tried to get into funky Belgian beers in my 30s. My reasoning was: other people like these, I think they taste gross, but I'm always telling people they can learn to like things, and if I did learn to like them, I'd expand my range of possible pleasures. I did end up liking them. Not love them, but enough to appreciate them. I really doubt that there is anything in the world that is enjoyed by a large…

That's generally my take as well. There's a handful of things that I just don't like in terms of food/beverage. Most of it is mouth feel, I don't like fat chunks, or raw meat... just feels off. As to taste, other than oysters and any kind of diet ginger ale, not much I wouldn't try a again or for a first time. And even the two of those I tried more than once. Spending plenty at a few places to try oysters in various preparations from restaurants that are respected for them. Nope, I'm done. As to diet ginger ale, they all taste particularly nasty to me.

Re: Is wine fake?

#414
post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I tasted some sparkling wines that to me were way better than Dom Perignon. And Pino Noir (forgot particular brand) I get for 20 Canadian pesos again tasted to me way better that some wine I bought for $120 to check why the fuck does it cost so much. So yes I am pretty sure that some wine is objectively better than sulfuric acid but the rest is just a matter of individual taste. It does not matter that the tester can…

What’s the exchange rate on Canadian pesos?

Use your imagination if Google is not helphul

Re: Is wine fake?

#415

I once wrote software that automatically graded wine "sweetness" based on sugar grams/L output via Spectroscopy? (I think) in a lab. After learing which wines regions / varietals produced what rating (sweet / dry / extra dry) is pretty much all I need now when picking wine. I'd say the sweetness is probably the only major difference between varietals but maybe it's just me. Extra dry is what I like best.

Wait, wouldn't this mostly only work on whites ?

Re: Is wine fake?

#416
post #399

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 no…

Same. This fooled me, as I was reading quickly and missed the duplications. Interestingly, I felt something was off but didn’t think anything of it except maybe “my eyes might be getting tired.” Consciousness/cognition as a prediction machine, and the the resulting cognitive biases and tricks, are fascinating.

The point is more that (unless maybe if you just learned reading), you just aren't going to notice it.

Re: Is wine fake?

#417
post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This depends on the specific kind of wine you're looking for, surely? It would be hard to find icewine for 20 euros, I'd think.

According to Google Shopping, the typical price range is from 19€ to 50€.

This needs to account for bottle size. In US and Canada, at least, icewine is typically sold in smaller containers.

Re: Is wine fake?

#418
This line about cat urine is amazing.

> (Do wines ever have 6-carbon carboxylic acids, or 10-carbon alkanes — i.e., goats, armpits or jet fuel? I am not a wine chemist and cannot answer this question. But one of the experts interviewed on Somm mentioned that a common tasting note is cat urine, but that in polite company you’re supposed to refer to it by the code phrase “blackcurrant bud.” Maybe one of those things wine experts say is code for “smells like a goat,” I don’t know.)

Re: Is wine fake?

#419
post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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, s…

This is all true, but much of the variation can be controlled with modern techniques and careful monitoring. Not magic, science. Again, this has a cost, so it is not that it has no value, but it does not justify a 400% - 1000% markup.

The magic (trick) comes from making people believe that it does ?

Re: Is wine fake?

#420

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…

In a similar vein, Best of Panama does a coffee auction where the highest rated coffee sold this year for $2000/lb. It's something like this each year, with a huge premium on first place.

https://auction.bestofpanama.org/en/lots/auction/auction-202...

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