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Is wine fake?

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Re: Is wine fake?

#511

Post by almog »

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…

Were the interns present at the time the editors entered? In other words — was blind tasting or double-blind testing?

Re: Is wine fake?

#512

Post by prvit »

kevincox wrote: post #507
prvit wrote: post #506

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They're good wines, but you can get a bottle that is just as good for a fraction of the price. I hear these things, but nobody will tell me what I should drink if I want a cheaper 2010 Mouton Rothschild. Or a cheaper Krug, people will recommend $50 Champagnes but generally not ones that actually pursue a similar style.

> It's more that you are paying for a unique flavor profile and reliability.

Sure, but people generally agree that some flavor profiles are better than others.

Re: Is wine fake?

#513

Post by teh_klev »

charlieyu1 wrote: post #394
eloff wrote: post #376

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing that blew me away about France is you could buy a bottle of wine in the supermarket for less than a bottle of coca cola.

Sigh. £6 a bottle of cheapest wine here in UK because of import tax and alcohol tax. And I could buy British gin in Hong Kong cheaper than in UK

See also minimum alcohol pricing in Scotland.

Re: Is wine fake?

#514

Post by vkazanov »

dontlaugh wrote: post #494
vkazanov wrote: post #484

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

The comment I replied to doesn't sound too informed.

Fortified wine culture sounds more like Portugal to me, even though they definitely make it almost everywhere.

EDIT: typo

Re: Is wine fake?

#515

Post by 988747 »

dv_dt wrote: post #380
javiramos wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Curious — What are the reasons?

Frequently the wine seems hyper local - what I was there in a restaurant we often just ordered the house wine. If you talked to the waiters or owners it was frequently made locally and including by the owners grown in backyards of the hole in the wall places. I think it cuts out a lot of costs - and there was not a bad wine among them.

I always thought that "house wine" is just an euphemism for "whatever we could get our hands on" - a workaround for the restaurant so that they do not have to list a specific brand on the menu.

Re: Is wine fake?

#516

Post by bombcar »

thih9 wrote: post #471
Retric wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In antiquity it was more what we might call street food or fast casual. What really defines fast food is mass production and uniformity.

The english wikipedia [1] agrees with you. Interestingly, I always assumed that “fast food” meant the type of food; so a hamburger, even if not made from mass produced ingredients, would always be a “fast food”. [1]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fast_food

It’s a weird thing - people in the USA know what you mean by fast food and somehow McDonald’s under a heat lamp counts (rarer now but still found) but burgers at the gas station under a heat lamp don’t count.

Re: Is wine fake?

#517

Post by BiteCode_dev »

skywal_l wrote: post #500
BiteCode_dev wrote: post #490

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It was a simplification on my part. If you want to be precise, then chaptalisation (the process of regulating alcohol quantity using sugar) is illegal in south of France vineyards, forbidden everywhwere when mixed with acidification processes, and allowed but under very strict conditions otherwise in "septentrionales" vineyards (which I have no idea how to translate in English).

Re: Is wine fake?

#518

Post by scelerat »

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…

> Having said that, I'll also mention, the way the editors struggled for new adjectives did sometimes make me laugh

Dancing about architecture

Re: Is wine fake?

#519

Post by disgruntledphd2 »

charlieyu1 wrote: post #394
eloff wrote: post #376

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing that blew me away about France is you could buy a bottle of wine in the supermarket for less than a bottle of coca cola.

Sigh. £6 a bottle of cheapest wine here in UK because of import tax and alcohol tax. And I could buy British gin in Hong Kong cheaper than in UK

I can buy Jameson cheaper in pretty much all of Europe, relative to Ireland. It's very sad.

Re: Is wine fake?

#520

Post by IggleSniggle »

plugin-baby wrote: post #498
antognini wrote: post #432

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Should have coded your brain in Rust, then you wouldn't have these sort of unsafe concurrent memory-access problems
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