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Is wine fake?

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Re: Is wine fake?

#41

Post by nkrisc »

Stratoscope wrote: post #27
lkrubner wrote: 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…

I roast my own coffee and buy most of my green beans from Sweet Maria's. Maria's husband Tom writes the tasting notes for each variety, such as... Rwanda Dry Process Macuba "Berry notes, floral impression, ripe blackberry, blueberry, fruited acidity, darker roasts tie in delicious bittersweet undertones, like strawberries dipped in chocolate sauce." Yemen Al Qafr Hawari "Sweet, somewhat rustic, notes of pistachio coo…

I don’t think I could ever tell two different coffee varieties apart, but I can definitely tell good coffee from bad coffee. Though that’s probably mostly about the roast and freshness more than anything. So there’s probably something to it but I imagine most of it is unintentional bullshit.

Re: Is wine fake?

#42

Post by [deleted] »

lkrubner wrote: 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…

[deleted]

Re: Is wine fake?

#43

Post by blindriver »

Yes, it's scientifically proven to be fake, but let people have some fun, what's the big deal? There are worse crimes than pretending to have the ability to super-taste wine.

Re: Is wine fake?

#44

Post by ramesh31 »

gspencley wrote: post #7
lkrubner wrote: 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 have been a lot of blind wine tastings done and the results are always interesting. Sometimes cheap bottles score as high, or higher than vintages. Other times people can spot the cheap "carton" wine easily. My wife and I love to cook, have discussed opening our own restaurant, have eaten at lots of very expensive "haute cuisine" restaurants and have tasted lots of wines. Part of the "problem" is that taste is…

>My wife and I love to cook, have discussed opening our own restaurant, have eaten at lots of very expensive "haute cuisine" restaurants and have tasted lots of wines.

Please don’t make the mistake of thinking “I like to cook” means “I would like to run a restaraunt”. They’re two completely different things.

Re: Is wine fake?

#45

Post by tptacek »

bell-cot wrote: post #11

Is there anything which involves both... (1) lots of subtle and subjective judgement calls (2) humans yearning to show off their wealth / sophistication / status ...which is NOT fake or widely-faked?

I don't know about judging the binary, but there are more- and less- faked luxury good appreciations. Whiskey is less faked than wine is (but, like most things, the distinctions blur as you go up in price; that makes, like, a kind of basic economic sense, right?)

Re: Is wine fake?

#46

Post by bombcar »

p1necone wrote: post #26
gspencley wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There have been a lot of blind wine tastings done and the results are always interesting. Sometimes cheap bottles score as high, or higher than vintages. Other times people can spot the cheap "carton" wine easily. My wife and I love to cook, have discussed opening our own restaurant, have eaten at lots of very expensive "haute cuisine" restaurants and have tasted lots of wines. Part of the "problem" is that taste is…

The secret is that a lot of cheap wine is pretty darn good. I imagine there's somewhat of a correlation between price and quality, especially at the absolute bottom end of the pricing scale. But it's a very loose correlation.

This is a huge secret across so many different markets; it's insane. The one we may be most familiar with is computers, of course - even a bargain-basement computer today is an absolute beast compared to 10+ years ago. Entire classes of "cheap foods" have disappeared because we are so rich we can make everything "good" - meaning the bargain-basement stuff is now often higher-quality than midrange stuff of 20/50/100 years ago.

Hot dogs are a decent example, they're all now "meat" and many are "pure beef" when they used to be the disastrous remains of who knows what. And even they are being destroyed by just how cheap hamburger is - the original fast food was hot dogs and that's almost entirely gone now.

Re: Is wine fake?

#47

Post by preinheimer »

doubled112 wrote: post #39
e10jc wrote: post #9

I've had a lot of red wine in my life; like, probably too much. The only bottle with a memorable taste came from a wine tour in Napa Valley where they said half the field was destroyed in a fire, so they were getting rid of the rest for cheap. The wine was super smoky... and absolutely delicious. I wonder why that never became a thing.

Probably difficult and expensive to consistently burn the field down.

Maybe happening more often with the wildfires these days

Re: Is wine fake?

#48

Post by kube-system »

p1necone wrote: post #26
gspencley wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There have been a lot of blind wine tastings done and the results are always interesting. Sometimes cheap bottles score as high, or higher than vintages. Other times people can spot the cheap "carton" wine easily. My wife and I love to cook, have discussed opening our own restaurant, have eaten at lots of very expensive "haute cuisine" restaurants and have tasted lots of wines. Part of the "problem" is that taste is…

The secret is that a lot of cheap wine is pretty darn good. I imagine there's somewhat of a correlation between price and quality, especially at the absolute bottom end of the pricing scale. But it's a very loose correlation.

Above $60, you’re mostly paying for name, provenance, or prestige rather than taste.

Re: Is wine fake?

#49

Post by antognini »

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 top of that there is a frothy market that is driven by fads, speculation, and hype.

He was of the opinion that generally speaking the quality of a typical wine increases monotonically with price up until around the $40 range with the big steps around the $5, $10, and $20 price points. But above $50 or so, you're no longer paying for higher quality, per se. It's more that you are paying for a unique flavor profile and reliability. But unless you're seeking out that particular flavor profile, you can get a bottle that is just as good for $30-40 (and occasionally even cheaper). And above a few hundred dollars it's all just fads, speculation, and hype. (He liked to say that the people who buy those wines have "more money than sense.") They're good wines, but you can get a bottle that is just as good for a fraction of the price.

Re: Is wine fake?

#50

Post by forgotusername6 »

A friend of mine from uni was really into wine. Won the varsity wine tasting competition. He bought a case of Italian reds because he knew it was his weakness. You absolutely can get good at wine, but not from casually drinking a glass every so often. Like all disciplines it takes practice.
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