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Is wine fake?

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Re: Is wine fake?

#421

Post by shaburn »

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.

French wine is cheaper than California wine in California.

Re: Is wine fake?

#423

Post by laurencerowe »

As someone who enjoys French table wine what is the local equivalent in California? So much of it seems to be high alcohol and overwhelming flavours, kinda like the IPAs.

Re: Is wine fake?

#424

Post by jpurnell »

A few professors in my undergrad econ department have done a lot of actual academic research into this, and, in fact, started the American Association of Wine Economists (https://wine-economics.org) with other economists who are interested in wine worldwide. They have a quarterly peer-reviewed journal, and the articles are genuinely interesting. Sample topics from the latest issue: "Does quality pay off? “Superstar” wines and the uncertain price premium across quality grades" or "Tracking the wines of the Judgment of Paris over time: The case of Stag’s Leap Wine Cellars’ Cabernet Sauvignon"

A few things I've gleaned from them over the years:

1) People definitely come to a wine tasting and think they have to sound smart. There's always someone who thinks they need to say "something-something oaky" to "fit in" because it's something they saw on TV. The point is not to sound like what you think a smart person sounds like, the point is to find a wine you like. Hard to get around it, but that's what a lot of articles like this are basically pointing out. It's not wrong, but it's also kind of missing the point.

2) People have different fundamental taste profiles – just like some people just like Coke instead of Pepsi, and a €100 Pepsi will taste "bad" to someone who's expecting a €100 Coke. But if you like Pepsi – and there is a real reason that bottle of pepsi costs €100 (e.g. materials, aging, process, etc.) – you're really going to like that €100 Pepsi.

3) As a consequence of 1), there are definitely wines that are more "marketing driven," and tap into that insecurity. I know a few people who have been offered thousands of dollars to steam off the label of empty bottles of wine they kept in their cellar for sentimental reasons, so that those labels could be re-glued to a bottle of whatever, so that they could then be trotted out to pump some dude's ego. It's a shame, but that's people.

4) @Antognini is pretty on target here. For the same vintage, if you open it up right away, you can get a very tasty "house" bottle of wine for €15, but you should taste a very significant difference in the €40-€50 of wine from the same maker. The difference is more likely to show up when you cellar it. The €15 bottle might last for about 3-5 years before losing its taste. The €40 will gain complexity and flavor for 10-15 years. A more expensive bottle from a reputable maker should/might/maybe/is supposed to signal that it's been made to last even longer, like 40-50 years.

5) Plug: A few years ago, I adapted a DOS app the aforementioned professors in my undergrad used in their blind tastings for iOS. You can see results of their tastings going back to the early 90s at http://liquidasset.com, and the app is at https://apps.apple.com/us/app/winetaster-3/id1491063699

Re: Is wine fake?

#425

Post by oska »

2muchcoffeeman wrote: post #308
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.

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.

I don't mean to sound patronising but my take on this is simply that he's a good salesman who levered up the personal relationship he's established with you

Re: Is wine fake?

#426

Post by CSSer »

poulsbohemian wrote: post #398
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 live in wine country. Used to have winemakers in the school PTA, so I got to know some of these folks... I'd completely agree with your professor. I'm not a "serious" wine drinker, but with a couple pointers you can pretty quickly start telling the difference in quality. One of our favorite "party tricks" is to set a budget ($10, $15, $20, etc) and buy a handful of bottles - turns out there's a lot of very enjoyabl…

I had the privilege to get a behind the scenes tour of a winery once because a friend’s family were the owners. They had some pretty sophisticated lab equipment. You could drop in a sample and it could tell you all sorts of things about its chemical makeup (magic to me because I never took much Chemistry). I asked them what sample attribute had the highest correlation with sales and without even hesitating they told me it was sugar content. They said their best selling wine was also their sweetest. They even said it was a pretty strong correlation that held all the way down the line from sweet, citrusy varietals to tannin-rich, cottony varietals. I think I was even told they could sometimes observe the effect from year to year if one vintage crop happened to be a little more or less sweet than the last year.

Now, for the record, I take the same approach you and GP mentioned here. I happen to prefer pretty dry wines too, but I’ve gotta admit knowing this shook me a little.

Re: Is wine fake?

#427

Post by an_aparallel »

dmix wrote: post #286
analog31 wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Reminds me of the loss leader strategy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loss_leader A retail shop will put TVs on sale for 50% off but only keep 5 in stock. They advertise it everywhere, 100 people show up looking for cheap TVs, find it's out-of-stock and buy one of the expensive ones that are only 5-10% off.

rottisserie chickens for $3.50 in Australian supermarkets are great examples of loss leaders. They get you in there, to buy chicken...and other stuff :)

Re: Is wine fake?

#428

Post by rpmisms »

I enjoy wine, but not to the level of detecting different ages or locations. I do, however, enjoy trying to find flavors in Whiskey, and I can attest that it's not all fake. The process and age makes a difference, and the age definitely comes out in the flavor of a whiskey. Of course it does, leaving a strong liquor in a cask will add flavors, and obviously time will determine how much of which flavors are imbued. I have a bottle of Bulleit rye, and my first taste impression was "I've had this before". Turns out it's made by some massive conglomerate that makes almost all rye whiskey in the US, and I had, indeed, had it before. It's as simple as recognizing a brand of ice cream or candy by taste. Candy might be harder, actually. Sugar masks flavor far better than alcohol.

Re: Is wine fake?

#429

Post by xyzzyz »

neilc wrote: post #397
xyzzyz wrote: post #392

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It does not cost nearly as much as the price premium. A regular household fridge costs something like $100/year to run. My fridge has 20 cubic feet of volume, which is something like 500 liters. This suggests we can fit at least 100 bottles into it. This gives us $1/year as upper bound for storage costs per bottle. This is upper bound, because air conditioning costs go down with volume, due to square-cube law. Point…

You also need to factor in the time value of money: if the winemaker sells you a 2022 release in 2022, they get paid immediately. Also factor in temperature and humidity controlled storage (a kitchen fridge will not do), insurance against disasters, backup power generation, and so on. If you think aged wines are overpriced, it is easy to cut out the middleman and age it yourself — so my guess is that the market is re…

> You also need to factor in the time value of money: if the winemaker sells you a 2022 release in 2022, they get paid immediately.

This is right, I forgot about this: at 5% interest rates, 5 years of storage is actually 25% of the original price, which is probably substantial factor.

> Also factor in temperature and humidity controlled storage (a kitchen fridge will not do),

My kitchen fridge example was only meant to provide an estimate for the cost. Controlling humidity upwards is not expensive at all, it’s even cheaper in fact than controlling temperature.

> insurance against disasters, backup power generation, and so on.

These are extremely cheap at scale. You don’t really need backup power generation, the wine won’t spoil from few hours or even days of inappropriate temperature.

> If you think aged wines are overpriced, it is easy to cut out the middleman and age it yourself — so my guess is that the market is reasonably efficient.

My point was rather that the mere cost of storage is not the main part of the premium. Capital cost is probably significantly higher, but what is probably even higher still is speculation premium: not all wine vintages are appreciating equally, and if you just buy random wines, they will likely won’t appreciate all equally over time.

Re: Is wine fake?

#430

Post by girvo »

pclmulqdq wrote: post #282
girvo wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There’s a better trick: chuck it in a blender for 30 seconds. Really softens the shitty flavours some cheap wines have haha

This is literally true, and it's why decanters exist. If you oxidize a wine, it mellows out the sharpness by letting some of the protein break down.

Yep! Whenever I get a bottle that is too harsh I do it. Works great, much to the amusement of my partner
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