Have you never wondered why I drink only distilled water, or rainwater, and only pure-grain alcohol?
Rainwater is considered a health hazard these days.
https://news.northeastern.edu/2022/08/10/forever-chemicals-r...
Is wine fake?
491–500 of 559 posts
Re: Is wine fake?
#492Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
> I asked them what sample attribute had the highest correlation with sales and without even hesitating they told me it was sugar content. This was the cause of a big scandal back in the 1980s when it was discovered that some Austrian winemakers were adding antifreeze to their wines. The wines are tested for their sugar content, but diethylene glycol has a sweet test and wouldn't be detected on standard chemical test…
"Chateau Scam 2014: Italy’s Weird World of Wine Fraud" https://www.thedailybeast.com/chateau-scam-2014-italys-weird...
Re: Is wine fake?
#493As 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…
Old and scarce wines you have to pay for because there just are only so many bottles to be had. You pay for the craft, where it came from, the heritage, the tradition, and for the fact that there's a limited supply that has an expiry date as well. You pay for the privilege of drinking that and reducing the finite supply.
It's like people buying a vintage car. It's worth a lot more than the sum of its parts. Because there might only be a handful left to buy. And it might have been owned by interesting people. It goes to the highest bidder. Same with a original paintings by some of the old masters. You might not be able to tell them apart from a good forgery or replica. But they are one of a kind and that drives their value. Scarcity.
Wine snobs of course are just that, people pretending to taste subtle differences that would probably fail a blind test. But there are undeniably wines that are very tasty and wines that are very much a bit bland and underwhelming (or hangover inducing). And there's a wide variety of different wine with very different flavor profiles that are pretty easy to tell apart. So, with some training identifying the difference between those is not that hard. There are grape varieties, yeast varieties, different aging and blending methods, soils, climates, etc. A good sommelier will be able to tell those apart. And a regular drinker will also taste the difference. And a wealthy drinker will seek out the rare experiences that are there to be had in the form of overly expensive bottles that provide just that.
I'm perfectly happy to drink cheap wine and I do so regularly. The mass produced stuff tends to be stable in quality and perfectly drinkable. I live in Germany and I noticed my local supermarket has Rumanian wine from only a single vendor (red, white, and rose). Affordable price and I figured they would not bother stocking it if it was really bad. So, I've tried them and while it's not amazing, it's very drinkable. There are also some local German wines that seem popular and are very drinkable. When in doubt, go for the bottles that are nearly out of stock. Trust your fellow drinkers to know a good bar-gain.
I do enjoy the occasional expensive bottle where you take a sip and notice that "hey this is some really tasty stuff". Not sure if I would pay 40 euro for it but I do enjoy it when I get served some. And I'll spend a bit more when I have dinner guests.
Re: Is wine fake?
#494Earlier quoted context omitted.
Which directly reflects the quality of the wine drinking public. I like the French approach better: educate your customers' tastes. In Russia they also drink sweet wines because most people there view wine as a juice that one puts in their vodka. The rich substitute the wine with very expensive champagne.
Hm. Russia and Balkans and the austro-hungarian region preferring sweeter wines is a centuries old culture and a wine making tradition. The same goes for Georgian wines. Vodka with wine... is that even a joke?
Maybe they're referring to fortified wine, which is made in parts of Eastern Europe?
Re: Is wine fake?
#495Wine quality ranking (and price) in France is less interested in what tastes good and more interested in what is most distinctive.
A lot of fine wine is priced on geographic prestige / scarcity. For example, there are many hectares of land that can produce Chablis (much of it perfectly fine to you and me), but only 1% of the wine producing estates of the region have Grand Cru status. This status is a combination of competency of the wine producer + geography of the estate (more so geography). The chablis grand cru producing estates sit at the top of the appelation, and all the environmental variables (“terroir”) of this micro area and the expression of these in the final product contribute to the wine being considered more distinctive.
Re: Is wine fake?
#496Earlier quoted context omitted.
Luckily France doesn't have to pay $1 million an acre like a Napa winery.
Just looked up, an hectare of (10,000 m^2, about 2.47 acre) is 1,102,000€ in the Champagne region If what you’re saying is true, then an acre in the Napa valley is more than twice as expensive as its counterpart in the Champagne region. Which is weird, I’d expect the Champagne acre to still make you a lot more money
Champagne is one of the most expensive and luxurious wine in France.
Re: Is wine fake?
#497For sure, it's not an emulator.
Re: Is wine fake?
#498Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
> I asked them what sample attribute had the highest correlation with sales and without even hesitating they told me it was sugar content. This was the cause of a big scandal back in the 1980s when it was discovered that some Austrian winemakers were adding antifreeze to their wines. The wines are tested for their sugar content, but diethylene glycol has a sweet test and wouldn't be detected on standard chemical test…
> a sweet test ... chemical tests
Assuming this isn’t just an autocorrect issue, is there a word for this phenomenon of writing an incorrect but similar word that’s also on your mind? It happens to me with annoying frequency.
Re: Is wine fake?
#499Earlier quoted context omitted.
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
In all my years of shopping with them, he has only ever recommended me a wine on 1 or 2 occasions because I explicitly asked. I get discounts and tastings regularly. They have warned me from buying things more times then they recommend things. They are not trying to “sell” me anything.
I'm not saying the recommendations are bad, but... it's a shop! Of course they're trying to sell you something!
(Making good recommendations may well be more profitable than making bad recommendations, because if they make bad recommendations you'll stop coming back. But they absolutely are trying to sell you something).
Re: Is wine fake?
#500Earlier quoted context omitted.
So that’s why it happened. I’d heard about the event but not the reason so I always assumed it had been some sort of contamination, or related to wine preservation. But no it was straight up devs bypass?
Adding sugar to wine is considered a great offense, and is not only illegal in France, but a disagrace. Still, some winemaker wake up in the middle of the night to do it in secret because it's hard to get a sweet taste or more alcohol naturally. Therefor, the anti-freeze workaround is not surprising.
> Adding sugar to wine is considered a great offense, and is not only illegal in France, but a disagrace.
That's not true. Adding sugar is even part of some AOP. It's used to regulate the amount alcohol in the finish product.