Educating Craner (about wine)

D

droid

Well-known member
Not my wheelhouse, but isnt wine appreciation above a certain minimum level been proven to be more or less bullshit?

...More recent work by Robin Goldstein, Hilke Plassmann, Robert Hodgson, and other economists and behavioral scientists has shown high variability and inconsistency both within and between blind tasters; and little correlation has been found between price and preference, even among wine experts, in tasting settings in which labels and prices have been concealed.[10][11]

Robert Hodgson, a California vintner and retired oceanographer noticed that the results of wine competitions were surprisingly inconsistent. With some expertise in statistics, Hodgson approached the organizers of the California State Fair wine competition in 2005 with a proposal. In the course of their routine duties, he would sometimes present the judges with samples from the same bottle three times without their knowledge. The judges were among the top experts in the American wine industry: winemakers, sommeliers, critics and buyers as well as wine consultants and academics. The results were "disturbing"... "Over the years he has shown again and again that even trained, professional palates are terrible at judging wine." The results were published in the Journal of Wine Economics[12][13][14] in 2008 and '09. Hodgson continued to analyze the results of wine competitions across the state and found that the medals awarded for wine excellence "were distributed at random". Although he concedes that "there are individual expert tasters with exceptional abilities", the objective evaluation of large numbers of wines as currently attempted at wine competitions is, he asserts, "beyond human ability"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blind_wine_tasting
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In 2001, researcher Fr?d?ric Brochet invited 54 wine experts to give their opinions on what were ostensibly two glasses of different wine: one red, and one white. In actuality, the two wines were identical, with one exception: the "red" wine had been dyed with food coloring.

The experts described the "red" wine in language typically reserved for characterizing reds. They called it "jammy," for example, and noted the flavors imparted by its "crushed red fruit." Not one of the 54 experts surveyed noticed that it was, in fact a white wine.

https://io9.gizmodo.com/wine-tasting-is-bullshit-heres-why-496098276
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entertainment

entertainment

Well-known member
those brain scans show that simply being told a wine is more expensive increases pleasure activation, too.

it's a lot about context. do wine experts deal with objective value? i don't know. it's supposed to be value-priced but so is art. a lot of it is illusion.
 
entertainment

entertainment

Well-known member
I don't know shit about wine but I've surveyed extensively the local supermarkets and tend to stick to those Nebbiolo grapes (Piedmont reds). They're mostly called Barolo or Barbaresco.

Not big on white either. German wines stille carry the residue of post-war indecorum and are therefore priced a bit cheaper. You can find some great Rieslings if the acidity / sweetness balance is struck, but it's easy to take a wrong step there too.
 
Mr. Tea

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
droid said:
Not my wheelhouse, but isnt wine appreciation above a certain minimum level been proven to be more or less bullshit?
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Probably, but what's that limit? I mean it could be 10 quid or 50 quid. The implication of it being one rather than the other are significant for people who like wine but have anything close to the median income.
 
Murphy

Murphy

cat malogen
droid said:
Not my wheelhouse, but isnt wine appreciation above a certain minimum level been proven to be more or less bullshit?
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If the drinker & the supply influencer are aspirationally minded, then yes.

If you let those creeps swim in their own piss though there are flavour profiles, which if you sample enough of without premature death being inflicted, shine.

This is a good case study (put in dinner thread), ?3.50 to ?3.99 from Aldi & Lidls. My Pops found this & rarely drank anything else for years at home

https://live.staticflickr.com/7536/15701376750_5c26a4a0cc_b.jpg

It's like any social norm where money & status play the predominant roles, people who won't eat in anything less than a Michelin * is the cultural outcome. The growth in the spending power of higher earning demographics in China & India has increased demand, which increases price, blitzes supply & leads to more "yes this Doura is eminently floaty & riffs on jammy wings of gossamer" etc. Being on the continent though, found small brasseries in France, Italy & Spain all serve pretty damn good table wine. On that side of the channel it doesn't take as much pretence to find gems that could easily tempt me back to partaking, but you rarely see them here.

Cotes du Rhone Villages are a good case study because, ironically, they are more available here. Different from Cotes du Rhones (see google) & def more flavour. If you want an experiment, try doing reductions with supermarket picks for roast dinner gravies. They usually smash your taste buds. Lighter Riojas (the heavier ones give nerve shredding hangovers) are worth sifting around for similar reasons, that Toro Loco or any number of ?5-6 La Mancha Tempranillos similarly.

Britain & Ireland don't have the climate, so we're more inclined toward other forms of alcoholic beverages. You can enjoy superb whisky or whiskey without braking the bank & the flavour is genuine. Still won't stop some pillock dropping ?12k on a bottle of Talisker a dead writer liked.
 
entertainment

entertainment

Well-known member
Wine, art, music, whatever - I will aways oppose the 'it's all subjective anyway' assertion. Dislike it more as a conversation stopper than as an actual proposition, though.
 
IdleRich

IdleRich

IdleRich
Portuguese wine is a kind of accidentally kept secret. I can't believe how good and cheap it is here. I can't remember the details but during war with France (with no French wine available) the English discovered they liked the sweeter fortified wine here and understood it could be transported with no less of quality too so they set up a load of companies to produce and export it and so on, which is why a lot of the companies that make port have names such as Cockburns or Taylor's or whatever. But that never happened with Portuguese wine and, partly as a result of that I guess, it seems to be almost unknown outside the country - which is weird cos it's truly cheap and really good... Compared to UK you can divide the prices by three or four to get the equivalent quality (as a rough estimate). I don't know much about which ones are good - and it's true that quite a few of them seem to not really know for sure exactly which grapes are involved (the bottles say things like "approximately 40 percent of so and so grape") - but I think that there is a moment to come when the rest of the world suddenly cottons on to what they're missing and there is a big Portuguese wine thing. The longer that takes to happen the better though as far as I am concerned cos at the moment I can always walk to the nearest newsagent and get a perfectly good wine for less than 3 euros without having to know anything at all.
 
Murphy

Murphy

cat malogen
Mourinho regularly shares a bottle of his favourite Portuguese wines with the few managers he still gets on with. You're lucky to see Douro here.

Port. Now that's a drink.
 
IdleRich

IdleRich

IdleRich
WashYourHands said:
Mourinho regularly shares a bottle of his favourite Portuguese wines with the few managers he still gets on with. You're lucky to see Douro here.
Port. Now that's a drink.
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The main region are Alantejo and Douro yeah. In fact - if you believe waiters and so on - almost everything good comes from Alantejo in terms of food, drink etc every time you are in a restaurant they say "this mushroom comes from Alantejo" and then "This wine is a particularly highly regarded one, it comes from Alantejo" and after a while you realise that's where everything comes from as far as I can tell. Apart from a few reds from Douro and a couple of dessert wines from Setubal and Lisbon region.
 
IdleRich

IdleRich

IdleRich
On the weekend we went away and visited a little place called Tomar. We drove back the scenic way to avoid the tolls and that takes you through miles and miles of vineyards Actually kinda creepy cos the roads are small and they go through all these empty fields, sometimes a farmhouse or something in the background, often just the occasional abandoned hut and robot arms spraying moisture to keep the crop hydrated I suppose. At times it's easy to imagine that the earth is no longer peopled but consists merely of machines still performing their archaic tasks, or maybe they've taken over and discovered a taste for wine I dunno.
Anyway, eventually the vineyards give way to a few small picturesque villages and also you have these wine factories (one smelled so strongly you could get drunk driving past) and also these "farm shops" for the wine brands. I understand that you can go there and do a wine tour, maybe get some cheap booze or something. I'm imagining it would be like in that film Sideways, maybe we'll give it a go, there are a few within an hour's drive.

Quinta do Casal Branco - Visit Ribatejo

E.N. 118, Km 69
www.visitribatejo.pt www.visitribatejo.pt

If I learn something I'll be happy to pass it on...
 
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