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Is Wine-Tasting Junk Science?

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Re: Is Wine-Tasting Junk Science?

#21

Post by jghn »

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #15
gabemart wrote: post #14

I have wanted to perform a rigorous double-blind wine-tasting experiment for a long time, but have always lacked the resources. The true test of the validity of wine-tasting isn't whether experts can tell "good" wine from "bad" wine, but whether experts can reliably describe the same wine with the same language with an acceptably small margin of error. My ideal experiment would give blindfolded wine experts a number…

Doesn't have to cost much. Just choose some supposed wildly different wines, and tear up a sheet to make blindfolds. My father-in-law Thomas is from India. He likes whiskey including Indian brands; his colleague was a Scotch whisky snob. At a party he challenged the snob to name all the whiskeys on the bar. Thomas went into another room with the bottles in a bag; came out carrying a tray with half a dozen shot glasse…

This is the real problem. The extreme majority of the "snobs" as you put it really don't have the pallet or skill to really be able to discern what they think they can, it's mostly brand loyalty, marketing, etc.

There often are people who can discern these things but they're much fewer and further between than people realize. Of course, those in the first category who agree with my statements will never have their mind changed, they'll just assume that they're in the second category. The likelihood of that being true has a lot of zeros after the decimal.

The problem with articles like these is that many "experts" fall into the first category, not the second. This is not without merit though as often these are the same "experts" that people trust to make buying decisions.

Re: Is Wine-Tasting Junk Science?

#22

Post by mikeryan »

gabemart wrote: post #14

I have wanted to perform a rigorous double-blind wine-tasting experiment for a long time, but have always lacked the resources. The true test of the validity of wine-tasting isn't whether experts can tell "good" wine from "bad" wine, but whether experts can reliably describe the same wine with the same language with an acceptably small margin of error. My ideal experiment would give blindfolded wine experts a number…

What you are describing is a sommelier exam.

There's an interesting documentary on some guys taking their master sommelier exam on Netflix called "Somm" who show an impressive array of these skills.

Re: Is Wine-Tasting Junk Science?

#23

Post by [deleted] »

gabemart wrote: post #16
JoeAltmaier wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn't have to cost much. Just choose some supposed wildly different wines, and tear up a sheet to make blindfolds. My father-in-law Thomas is from India. He likes whiskey including Indian brands; his colleague was a Scotch whisky snob. At a party he challenged the snob to name all the whiskeys on the bar. Thomas went into another room with the bottles in a bag; came out carrying a tray with half a dozen shot glasse…

> Doesn't have to cost much. Just choose some supposed wildly different wines, and tear up a sheet to make blindfolds. The hard part is finding qualified experts who are willing to participate. The experiment would be most interesting and uncontroversial if it was done with experts whose credentials were unassailable.

[deleted]

Re: Is Wine-Tasting Junk Science?

#24

Post by misiti3780 »

Is it just me or does the art example goes against the entire concept of "thin slicing" in Malcolm Gladwell's book Blink. He gave an example of the exact opposite - a bunch of art experts thinking a statue is authentic, then one guy walking in, looking at the piece for 5 seconds, and saying it is fake (which it was).

Re: Is Wine-Tasting Junk Science?

#25

Post by diego_moita »

There are a lot of experiments showing that wine experts are very unreliable: by serving them the same wine in 2 different bottles (cheap and expensive), by adding food colorant to white wines, etc. Daniel Kahneman describes some of them in "Thinking Fast and Slow".

The same thing has been done with other fields dealing with vague and loosely-defined concepts: stock-picking, sports commentary, etc.

Re: Is Wine-Tasting Junk Science?

#26

Post by [deleted] »

gabemart wrote: post #14

I have wanted to perform a rigorous double-blind wine-tasting experiment for a long time, but have always lacked the resources. The true test of the validity of wine-tasting isn't whether experts can tell "good" wine from "bad" wine, but whether experts can reliably describe the same wine with the same language with an acceptably small margin of error. My ideal experiment would give blindfolded wine experts a number…

[deleted]

Re: Is Wine-Tasting Junk Science?

#27

Post by blakeja »

So is this article saying that trying to quantify what makes a wine "good" or "bad" is a matter of perspective and lacks any kind scientific method? I mean, do we need a scientific method if it is something we collectively can pretty much agree upon? They can do all the studies they want and criticize this all to the finest minutiae, but in my own personal experience I can say with certainty that wine recommended me to by trusted experts is generally better than just blindly picking a bottle. (Well not quite blind, but with a really limited knowledge of regions and vintages). At the end of the day for all us casual wine drinkers, I would think that is all that really matters. It may be interesting to see some statistics on casual vs serious wine drinkers, could help clarify a lot of this.

I would also say getting to know an expert to the point where they know your own individual tastes really helps. Perhaps it is this aspect that people are getting hung up, everyone will have their own tastes, enter the expert who can categorize this for you, etc.

Re: Is Wine-Tasting Junk Science?

#28

Post by _ak »

mankyd wrote: post #5

> The brothers' taste is [...] vindicated by their ability to name and communicate what they notice in the wine, and to enable us to come to notice it, too. But that's the point of calling it "junk". What they notice (and thusly communicate) about the wine often simply isn't there. They certainly do "notice" things, but what they notice is often imaginary. A good bottle of wine can certainly be enjoyed. It's a questi…

I'm not sure whether things are actually imaginary, or whether they might just have a lower perception threshold.

In beer tasting, we talk about off-flavors like green apple, butterscotch, cooked cabbage, or flavors like spicy/peppery, cloves, bananas, citrus, passionfruit, etc. None of these are imaginary, as each of these are linked to a specific chemical compound, such as acetaldehyde, diacetyl, DMS, various phenols and esters, and of course hop oils and various humulones, cohumulones, etc. from the hops.

What would help in wine tasting would be to link each aroma and flavor to specific chemical compounds, it would make detection more objective and make it possible to tell apart the very real aromas and flavors from the imaginary ones.

Re: Is Wine-Tasting Junk Science?

#29

Post by okabat »

pappyo wrote: post #9

It's actually quite impressive what a master Sommelier can do. S/he can taste a wine, tell you the varietal, tell you the region it was made and the year it was produced. The flowery language behind describing the wines is for the person the Sommelier is explaining the wine to. I highly recommend the documentary Somm [0]. It's not an easy thing to become a master wine taster. [0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O4ze…

I walked away from Somm convinced that wine tasting is a load of crap. The organization that puts on the "Master Sommelier" exam doesn't share results or a scoring rubric, which is a huge red flag that the test isn't merit based. It screams of manufactured exclusivity.

The best trained wine tasters can use deductive reasoning to narrow down the wine's identity, but a significant portion seems to be visual. Arguably, they are only effective at this because wine taxonomy is defined by visual characteristics. In a double blind taste test, I highly doubt it's possible to precisely identify the wine.

Re: Is Wine-Tasting Junk Science?

#30

Post by applecore »

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #15
gabemart wrote: post #14

I have wanted to perform a rigorous double-blind wine-tasting experiment for a long time, but have always lacked the resources. The true test of the validity of wine-tasting isn't whether experts can tell "good" wine from "bad" wine, but whether experts can reliably describe the same wine with the same language with an acceptably small margin of error. My ideal experiment would give blindfolded wine experts a number…

Doesn't have to cost much. Just choose some supposed wildly different wines, and tear up a sheet to make blindfolds. My father-in-law Thomas is from India. He likes whiskey including Indian brands; his colleague was a Scotch whisky snob. At a party he challenged the snob to name all the whiskeys on the bar. Thomas went into another room with the bottles in a bag; came out carrying a tray with half a dozen shot glasse…

Sorry, but that story is pretty dumb. If an expert is tricked into drinking the same shitty Indian whisky six times, they're going to be thrown off.
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