
Has wine gone bad? - YeGoblynQueenne
https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/may/15/has-wine-gone-bad-organic-biodynamic-natural-wine
======
nrclark
It's crazy how much of the wine world is an 'emperor's new clothes' kind of
situation.

There was a study done a little while ago ([http://www.caltech.edu/news/wine-
study-shows-price-influence...](http://www.caltech.edu/news/wine-study-shows-
price-influences-perception-1374)) which showed that people perceive wine very
differently depending on price. Even if it's the same wine. So somebody who's
told they're tasting a $90 bottle will rate it much better than somebody who's
told they're tasting a $5 bottle, even though they're both drinking the exact
same thing.

After all the uproar over Brochet's "The Color of Odors", I did a tasting with
a few friends where I chilled red and white wines down to the same
temperature, and had them try the wines blindfolded. Across 6 people who all
considered themselves wine enthusiasts, it was pretty dicey even being able to
tell a Merlot from a Sauv Blanc. Maybe it was my just my lame friends, or
maybe I chose bad wines. Or maybe not.

Different professional wine tasters will rate a given wine extremely
differently. And they'll comment on different 'subtle notes of chocolate' in a
product that is entirely made of grapes and yeast.

I would be genuinely surprised if a double-blind test revealed that aging a
particular bottle actually makes it taste better in a measurable way.
Different, maybe. But if 'better' is subjective, then it's by definition not
'better' in an absolute sense.

I enjoy a nice glass of wine, don't get me wrong. But the culture around it is
elitist and unscientific, and I'm glad to see winemakers trying to tear it
down a peg or two.

~~~
wheels
Being the sort of person who enjoys a regular tipple, when starting a startup
(and conserving cash whereever possible), I got in the habit of blind testing
wines and beers to find my favorite of the cheap ones.

For beer, especially, the main distinction between basic German pilsners (I
live in Berlin) was the social class that they're marketed to. Price is a
pretty poor predictor of quality or taste, but you can choose to spend
anywhere from about 50 cents to €1.20 to get almost indistinguishable beers.
That doesn't mean to say that some aren't better than others, but that price
isn't a good predictor of where they fit on the quality scale. (With craft
beers things are pretty different, however.) There are very obviously working
class beers, professional beers, etc.

With wine, my impression that almost everything that was sold at a grocery
store broadly fit into the category of generic cheap wine. There is a weak
correlation between quality and price, but if you sampled a bunch of them, it
wasn't hard to find bottles at €3 that were better than the average bottle at
€6, and bottles at €6 that were as good as the average bottle at €12. (They
don't get much more expensive than €12 in grocery stores here. Note, wine is
about twice as expensive for the same quality in the US, in my experience.)
Notably, _none_ of those wines would be truly interesting, just better
expressions of their archetype.

The most interesting way to taste wine that I've found is at high-end
restaurants that do pairings. Having a professional that just picks out
interesting wines that they think fit with particularly quirky dishes has
yielded more interesting results for me than the handful of wine tastings I've
done. They'll bring out stuff that's truly _weird_ and _interesting_ if you're
used to grocery store wine. And here at least, once you've, ahm, _stomached_ ,
what you're paying for the meal, the glasses of wine aren't exorbitant --
about €8/glass, even at a place with a couple Michelin stars.

Relative to the other categories of booze, the place where I have genuine
expertise is whisky. I have a large collection that's, well, worth more than
my car. The beautiful thing about whisky, however, is that you can keep
bottles of different things open for years and compare them to each other.
That makes it pretty easy to figure out where you get the best bang for your
buck. Over about €35/bottle, there's not a particularly strong correlation
between quality and price. There are even some fantastic whiskies below that
that punch _way_ above their price-class (e.g. Laphroiag Quarter Cask, or
Rittenhouse Rye). While there are some particularly unique and great expensive
whiskies, even for a trained tongue and nose, it's absolutely no guarantee
that a €100 bottle will be better than a good €40 bottle. Often it will just
be _rarer_ , and stroke the whisky-nerd ego to a greater extent. ;-)

~~~
1024core
> the place where I have genuine expertise is whisky

I like really peaty, smoky whiskies. What would you recommend on the cheap
end?

~~~
wheels
One of the two that I mentioned there, the Laphroiag Quarter Cask, is, in my
opinion, the best bang-for-your-buck whisky on the market these days. It's
super peaty. It's apparently now about €35 (for better or worse, whisky has
become more trendy, and there's been a sharp uptick in the prices -- 3-4 years
ago you could get said bottle for €22). It's seriously better than a lot of
whiskies that go for twice that price. Basically, in a hackery-way -- they
exploited that smaller barrels (with higher wood-to-liquid ratios) age whisky
faster. That means they can produce better stuff on the cheap.

Another old standard of mine is the Talisker 10 year old. It's about the same
price. It's not very complex, but has a powerful single taste. (When booze
tasters say "complex", what they mean is that the taste changes over time from
the moment it hits your tongue to the last bit of aftertaste. Something that
"only has one note" isn't complex -- it means that it tastes the same in the
aftertaste as it did the first moment. But "complex" isn't a euphemism for
"good" \-- it just means "changing".)

If you want to splurge a bit, two whiskies at about double that price are:

\- Ardbeg Corryvreckan: in my not-so-humble opinion, better than Uigedail
(that exelius remommends below; I have open bottles of both). It's so packed
with flavor that it's a bit overwhelming. Also bottled at cask strength.

\- Ben Riach 17: Not from the islands, like most peated whiskies, but has a
mix of tastes of Speyside and Islay. Sadly, looking now, this has also
recently gotten a lot more expensive. A couple years ago it was about €55, now
it's €95.

~~~
DennisP
I'm just getting started with scotch. At first I tried Lagavulin, and the long
iodine finish really put me off. Then I got a Highland Park Valkyrie and loved
it. The other day I cautiously tried a bit of the Lagavulin again and liked it
better; I'm not sure if whether it's from my tastebuds being different, three
months of oxidation, or just not drinking much of it.

What would you recommend for smoky scotches that don't have much iodine?
(Talisker is on my short list right now.)

~~~
wheels
Laguvulin is honestly kind of middle of the pack for "iodine-ish" (like the
original poster, I can relate to some skepticism with these labels) smokey
whiskies. If that put you off, and you like Highland Park, I'd say that you'd
probably be better off focusing on lighter, subtler whiskies.

The cheaper versions of that would be, for example, a Redbreast 12 (Irish) or
a Glenmorangie 10. The only Highland Park that I have sitting around is an 18
year old, and I just compared them to that (again, the nice thing about
whiskies is that you can put a few drops in a glass for comparison), and while
they both have a little less to them than the 18 year old, they're also less
than half the price. If you're feeling like branching over to the fruitier
side, something like a Glendrodach 15 would be worth trying. It's not _soo_
far off from the others, but tastes a bit sweeter and is a bit more complex.

If you're committed to smokey, non-iodine-y whiskies, Talisker is good, as
noted. Maybe a Bowmore 12 (a little sweeter), or, if you find it, Ardmore or a
Ben Riach. But again, it sounds more like your tastes go away from the smokey
stuff to subtler whiskies.

\---

A thing I'll note for the uninitiated here is that another nice feature of
whisky is that there are literally only dozens of distilleries. There are
something like 80 in Scotland. For a whisky nerd it's entirely possible to
have a good 1/2 to 1/3 of them on a reasonably sized shelf. And since bottles
take several years to go off, you really can have a huge percentage of the
total range represented in a moderate whisky nerd's collection.

~~~
collyw
I read if you have less than half of a bottle then you should drink it within
6 months.

~~~
wheels
You can also put marbles into them to restore the volume, but I don't bother.
I've only once had a bottle that went far off (meaning too much of the alcohol
evaporated out), and I'd kept it with only 2-ish shots in it for probably a
year and a half. So normally after I get down to about the last quarter
bottle, I try to finish them within a couple months, and that's done me well.

~~~
dbrgn
For me, Laphroaig Quarter Cask was also the first Whisky I bought. I kept it
around for a long time (maybe 2 years) because I did not want to "waste" it
too quickly.

The last few glasses I drank were really disappointing compared to the initial
fanstastic glasses. I can't describe the tastes, but it was simply not good
anymore. When too much air gets into the bottle, the Whisky can oxidize,
changing its taste (usually for the worse).

------
api_or_ipa
I have to say I hope the wine industry goes the same way as the craft beer
industry: towards innovative techniques to differentiate brands by distinct
taste and sourcing. Walk into any liquor store and half the store is filled
with wine labels that most people can't differentiate. Compare this to the
beer aisle: A wild yeast lambic is only similar to a Bud Light in that they
are both beers. I'd be hard pressed to ever debate drinking one or the other
because they are so distinct. Not that either of them are bad, but they serve
different times and places. I'd love to see the same with wine. Give me bold,
ambitious wines that either use long-forgotten techniques or pioneer new ones.
Give me as much variety as possible, and hell, wrap it up in feel good micro-
winery stories.

Let consumers choose what they like, just like how the Craft Beer industry has
done for the last couple of years. If there's one lesson to learn, it's that
consumers love to try new varieties, and there's a lot of money to be made for
being ambitious.

For everyone in the Bay Area, it's worth your time to go up to Sonoma county
and hangout at Lagunitas and Russian River Breweries. Both are famous for not
holding back and brewing whatever beer comes to their mind, and it's
_delicious_.

~~~
barrkel
Wines also taste completely different from one another. E.g. taste a vin
jaune, a vin doux naturel, an eiswein, an orange wine - you'd never mistake
any of these for one of the others, and none of them for any normal red or
white off a restaurant wine list.

Similarly, it's hard to mistake an aged Burgundy for a Cote Rotie, or a
Sauvignon Blanc for a Reisling.

Wine stores without Enomatic machines or equivalent are a mostly waste of
time, IMO, unless you already know the maker's style and it's what you're
looking for; or the owner has excellent taste. Dispensers give you the ability
to taste a dozen or two wines with ease in a single evening.

~~~
unethical_ban
I don't think the variety in flavor is as obvious in wine as in beer. For
someone with practice, the difference (and ability to describe the difference)
between a Sauvingon Blanc and Chardonnay isn't difficult. I think anyone off
the street can taste the difference between a chocolate stout, a hefeweizen
and a pale lager.

Sometimes I think wine could be dumbed down. My best example: Sauv Blanc
tastes like grass and bell pepper. Is that universal? No. Does that capture
every subtlety? No. But it is the defining characteristic.

~~~
typomatic
> the difference (and ability to describe the difference) between a Sauvingon
> Blanc and Chardonnay isn't difficult. I think anyone off the street can
> taste the difference between a chocolate stout, a hefeweizen and a pale
> lager.

I'd like to observe that when you wanted to claim that wines were
indistinguishable, you picked two wines that were quite similar. When you
wanted to claim beers were distinguishable, you picked chocolate stout vs
hefeweizen, which is clearly not the same sort of example.

~~~
unethical_ban
I don't know what I don't know. I guess what I'm saying is, to the non-
discerning wine drinker, there is red and white. Perhaps sweet vs. dry in
there. It is much more difficult to taste the "dark fruit" and "light fruit"
differences in particular reds than it is to taste the presence of certain
overpowering notes in almost every beer. Wine is more subtle.

With beer, everything except pale lager tends to have a distinct flavor of
some kind, that can be named easily. Chocolate, wheat, fruit, corn (Keystone),
etc.

~~~
typomatic
You have quite a lot of opinions on a topic which you admittedly don't know.

~~~
unethical_ban
I was actually trying to be polite and humble, since I've tasted at least 700
distinct beers and probably about 80 wines. I do have my opinions, and the
servers in any decent establishment will not insult the person who likes a
drink "because it tastes good".

You have quite an offputting smugness, triggered by such a light and otherwise
friendly discussion.

~~~
cycrutchfield
And you have quite an offputting ignorance, which you show no qualms about
putting on display for everybody to see.

Seriously? Comparing sauvignon blanc and chardonnay to a chocolate stout and a
pale lager? Are you intentionally trying to be disingenuous?

------
specialp
The main thing causing off flavors is not the fact that the grapes are grown
naturally and organically, it is that they are being fermented by wild yeast.
That is the part that is kinda lost in this article. Fermentation with wild
yeast can produce unpredictable results and what we would consider bad
flavors.

Over time yeast strains have been colonized and maintained that make for a
clean and fast fermentation. I mean think wild wine and beer is cool, but we
have yeast now you don't have to worry about your wine tasting like a stinky
sock, or lit matches. There's nothing inherently more organic by doing that,
and the possibility that you are going to have a funky tasting wine is high.
The discussion about pesticides and mechanization is another issue.

~~~
emodendroket
Well, yeah, but the funky and weird flavors are the whole point of the
exercise, aren't they?

~~~
foobar1962
Using cheese as an example, it's the difference between camembert and
gorgonzola: same basic ingredient, different yeast. Different colour and
massively different flavour.

Same with yeast for wine: fruity citrus with overtones of vomit.

~~~
emodendroket
I mean I am a lot more familiar with sour beers, but I love the funky flavors
they give bizarre names like "sweaty horse blanket."

~~~
foobar1962
As a brewer you want to have a consistent product. Once you'd got a brew with
just the right amount of "horse blanket" you'd cultivate that yeast culture
and use it again.

To do that you need to make sure there are no other yeast strains in the raw
ingredients.

Louis Pasteur was working on beer brewing when he discovered the microbes, and
invented the heating process to kill them.

~~~
emodendroket
When you buy a beer made with wild fermentation that's obviously not what's
going on

------
miduil
> This means using only organic grapes, picked by hand, and fermenting slowly
> with wild yeasts from the vineyard (most vintners use lab-grown yeasts,
> which Riffault says are engineered “like F1 cars, to speed through
> fermentation”).

This sounds kind of wrong, almost every single plant we are eating has been
optimized for our needs over the past ~200 years (citation needed). Cucumber,
tomato, strawberry, zucchini, eggplant, avocado, watermelon, carrot and corn,
just to name a few, have been engineered "like F1 cars" for each specific
demand. So why should it be an issue to use optimized yeasts for wine too?

PS: Probably unambiguous, but I was instantly scared this article is going to
be about Wine Is Not an Emulator.

[https://www.winehq.org/](https://www.winehq.org/)

~~~
kevinqiu1
But has it been optimized for taste? Or for the marketplace and maximum
profit? You mention the tomato. If you've ever had a fresh heirloom tomato I
think you'd agree that they're much more delicious than the "optimized"
tomatoes from the local chain supermarket. However, the supermarket tomato is
a lot easier to grow and lasts longer in storage and transport. We're just
seeing people with the knowledge and money demanding taste and a general
cultural shift in that direction (all the artisanal products that have been
cropping up). Because in the last 100 years, we've optimized for profit and
the global supply chain rather than taste. Nothing wrong with either IMO, it
depends on what you want. Delicious tomatoes, or having tomatoes in January.

Specifically regarding yeast though, spontaneously fermented beers have very
interesting and IMO delicious flavors going on, but it'd be impossible to make
such beers on a Budweiser scale, by definition it's more of an art and not an
industrial process.

------
AndrewBissell
Although she's herself partial to wines that fall in the "natural" camp, my
wife has grown frustrated and wary of the term. Robert Parker's opinion may
not be the _most_ reliable on the subject, given that he's spent most of his
career lauding huge, unctuous, oaky Napa wines, but it's true that there's
very little in terms of concrete boundaries for what constitutes "natural
wine." And some of the practices the natural crowd wants to jettison, like
adding sulfur, are essential to creating balanced, pleasant wines, and have
been used for centuries. As one of our distributor friends said, "the first
duty of wine is to taste good."

During a recent bottling we found ourselves forced into an interesting high-
vs-low intervention experiment. My wife felt her Sauvignon Blanc was too
cloudy, so we were trying to filter it as it was bottled. We made it through
about 50 cases' worth, but the filters kept clogging as we bottled, which was
stretching out the bottling time and threatening to cost us a bunch of money.
So, for the remaining cases we bottled without the filter. For the first month
or two in bottle the unfiltered wine was definitely a bit "funky" and a lot
more volatile on the nose than the filtered. But now, although it's still
quite a bit more cloudy, we both prefer the unfiltered Sauv Blanc.

------
jimnotgym
> – and have triggered the biggest split in the wine world for a generation

Interesting. I don't care to go into the reasons but I am pretty exposed to
professionals in the wine trade, and I have not heard much about this beyond
the two articles on Hacker News. I don't think the industry is paying much
attention at all.

I think it is a bit like I have seen numerous hipster-ethical-organic coffee-
shops come and go in my town, but Starbucks just keeps on opening new stores.

~~~
Kalium
I've seen a handful of hipster-ethical-natural wine shops pop up around the SF
Bay.

The wine doesn't seem to be inherently better, but it does seem to start at
$12 a glass.

------
cascom
Key for me is are the pesticides and additives beyond yeast ending up in
wines..

"Yet, as natural wine advocates point out, the way most wine is produced today
looks nothing like this picture-postcard vision. Vineyards are soaked with
pesticide and fertiliser to protect the grapes, which are a notoriously
fragile crop....The modern winemaker has access to a vast armamentarium of
interventions, from supercharged lab-grown yeast, to antimicrobials,
antioxidants, acidity regulators and filtering gelatins, all the way up to
industrial machines."

~~~
dx034
There is organic wine. It'll still contain lab-grown yeast (to ensure quality)
but gets rid of the additives. It's quite expensive (as grapes are fragile)
and not very common but can be found in a lot of supermarkets by now.

------
sudosteph
> At a recent natural wine fair in London, I encountered winemakers who farmed
> by the phases of the moon and didn’t own computers; one man foraged his
> grapes from wild vines in the mountains of Georgia;

I wonder if those wild grapes were muscadine or scuppernongs? They grow wild
in NC, and are absolutely delightful. They're big, juicy, super sweet, with
the only downsides being a pit inside and tough skin on the outside. Still
would prefer them to the seedless grocery store grapes any day. I've only
tried a few wines made from them, and though I'm no expert on the topic, I
think it's worth a try if you're in the mood for something a bit more
adventurous. The price is usually quite reasonable too.

------
dmitriid
The wine produced today is the best wine that humanity has produced, ever.
Thanks to modern biology, technology etc.

Even the "natural" wine is nowhere close to the "natural wine of yesteryear"
thanks to the modern barrels, modern temperature control, modern bottling
techniques etc. etc.

The problem with modern "natural producers" (be it wine or any other produce)
is that they pretend to be anti-technology, anti-pesticides, anti-<you name
it> while selectively enjoying the very same advantages they are speaking out
against. And when it comes to grapes... I wonder if their organic wines can
survive only because they enjoy the group immunity against the very many grape
diseases [1][2]

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_French_Wine_Blight](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_French_Wine_Blight)
[2]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_grape_diseases](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_grape_diseases)

~~~
AndrewBissell
There are a fair number of self-proclaimed "natural" producers who are using
fruit from vineyards sprayed with Roundup and other industrial pesticides.

------
21
I had no idea that most wine is made from concentrates. Makes you wonder why
this is not common knowledge. Do they maybe fear something?

~~~
svnsets
It's not in the best interest of the wineries or the distributors to advertise
that unless legally obligated to do so, which is why it isn't really common
knowledge. The whole "natural/organic/non-gmo/no-pesticides-added" labels
common in the food and beverage industry would likely cause unwanted contrast
to wines labeled as "from concentrate".

~~~
joering2
To be clear, there is nothing wrong from being "from concentrate", other than
probably a huge PR campaign by major OJ companies to make you think juice "not
from concentrate" is somehow more healthier or something. Fun fact is those
are the same PR companies that Kellogs used to coin "breakfast is the most
important meal of the day" which still as of today many doctors argue that
actually your last meal is the most important because as you sleep your body
regenerates and besides it will be left for the time of your sleep (8 hours?)
without food or water.

Anyways there is nothing wrong with orange juice from concentrate. Its always
been like this: 60% OJ concentrate, rest water. As that a good healthy ration.
"Not from concentrate" is a PR gimmick. Think for yourself: A glass of "not
from concentrate" orange juice would have 4-6 grown oranges squeeze to fill it
in. What was the last time you ate 4-6 grown oranges at one sitting, and do
you really believe thats healthy? If anything it makes your liver works super
hard to put all that extra vitamin C into your bladder so you can rush to tha
bathroom.

~~~
bhandziuk
Does the from concentrate stuff have anything different other than some water
removed? One you add water back in isn't it the same as the not from
concentrate stuff? I.e. Still the same 4-6 oranges no matter what?

~~~
John_KZ
It's the same 4-6 oranges if you consider having a sterilized orange juice
concentrate spend 6 months to a year in storage and lose all of it's flavor
"the same" as a freshly squeezed orange. For most commercial orange juices,
all the flavor is engineered with artificial ingredients. I'm pretty sure that
the only reason they still bother with oranges is legal requirements.

------
Quanttek
Admittedly, I haven't read the article yet but still wanted to make a small
point: In both conventional and 'ecological' wine production, wineries have to
use different sprays to keep off fungis that destroy the wines. Convetional
wineries use fungicides while ecolgical ones have to spray much more often,
mostly using materials like copper. This is at least true for Europe after
certain fungi were imported from Asia and America during the Renaissance where
the local grape varieties are naturally resistant. There are fungi-resistant
varieties which are crossings between European and Asian/American varieties
that try to keep the taste but (mostly) eliminate the need for spraying. Had
the chance to taste some local varitieties, and they were (for my amateur
taste buds) wondeful.

[https://www.piwi-international.de/en/information-en.html](https://www.piwi-
international.de/en/information-en.html)

------
cascom
I read somewhere that essentially any wine that retails for less than $15-20
is generally the wine equivalent of fast food and industrially manufactured,
wines from $20-$40 vary considerably in their process, and wines $40+ are
generally made in ways that conform to ones "mental notions" of how wine is
made... same article also said that at ~$100 there stops being any quality
difference among wines and it is all taste/preference/supply & demand

~~~
jimnotgym
In the UK a standard wine attracts duty of £2.17+20% vat (from memory). Then
there is the vat on the price of the wine itself. Consider the cost of the
bottle and shipping from France and you will see that the wine in a cheap say
£6.99 bottle is worth less than 1 euro!!!! In a £12 bottle the wine itself
could be worth 5 times as much! A classic fixed vs variable cost problem. Then
take a £24 bottle, the wine itself is only around 2 times more expensive. So
yes there can be a real sweet spot (in the UK £12-15). I don't know anything
about US taxes to translate, but the point is still valid.

~~~
cascom
See this article/thread
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17078319](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17078319)

Basically in the US a $100 wine in a restaurant retails for $50, Wholesales
for $33, and the winery sells it for $19, and it costs them ~$14.25 to make it
(all pre-sales tax)

~~~
dx034
Don't restaurants buy at wholesale or wineries directly?

~~~
cascom
Yes - restaurants typically buy at that $33 wholesale price - hence the rule
of thumb is restaurant prices are 3x wholesale and 2x retail.

Generally, I don’t believe restaurants can but direct from the winery as a
result of absurdly complex tiered distribution laws

------
matchagaucho
My nit with Napa and Sonoma wines lately is that the bottles may say 14% ABV,
but are actually 16%+ ABV.

This is regressing back to Night train levels of alcohol.

~~~
bluetidepro
Is there any laws around this having to be accurate? What makes you say it's
higher than the bottle says? I know nothing about this, so mainly just curious
for you to expand more on your comment.

~~~
AndrewBissell
My wife runs a natural-ish winery and I help out with some of the regulatory
filings. All bottle labels have to be approved by TTB and include the ABV.
They don't require you to submit any lab results in support of your claimed
alcohol percentage, but if you're caught selling wine outside a certain margin
of error it can result in some kind of sanction.

High alcohol wines are somewhat in favor for Napa/Sonoma reds, but 14% is a
cutoff for lower excise tax rates and a lesser regulatory burden in general,
so it wouldn't be surprising if people are trying to game this somewhat.

A funny thing about wine industry regulation is it's entirely focused on
whether or not you are paying taxes. We've never had to file or demonstrate
anything related to the safety or purity of our wine.

------
dlwdlw
I think it helps to think of wine more as consumable art. Art, like the mona
lisa has its value tied not in the intrinsic properties but its position
within its cultural and historical context.

The trick being that this environment is a sub environment available only to
those with a lot of time and money. Ability to appreciate indicates knowledge
and belonging to this sub environment.

The mind actually activates more strongly when the context is known. Similar
to how a certain degree of discipline is necessary for classical music or
sailing to actually enjoy them.

But because the actual context is much smaller than the perceived context its
also a ripe context to BS in. Similar to emperors clothes except that maybe
perhaps once upon a time such invisible thread did/does exist.

~~~
mafro
I think you are over-intellectualising the experience of the vast majority.

It's a drink. It tastes good. You learn about wine (like most things) through
practice.

------
the_watcher
> “You need to be OK with losing some barrels, or to simply accept the wine
> you made.”

I once met someone who started a microbrewery that was reasonably successful
at that point (I am blanking on the specific brewery, it was moderately
successful in Austin at the time). He told me that many of the "seasonal" or
"special" batches that taste substantially different than typical beers are
simply bad batches that the brewer finds a way to package and sell another
way. Habanero and other spicy beers are apparently particularly likely to be
this. I wonder if that will be the ultimate solution to the bad batches that
natural wine-making produces.

------
jotm
Wine from concentrate. Blergh. Give me that not quite fully fermented homemade
wine from wild grapes any day.

~~~
lisper
Huh? Where do you see that? The word "concentrate" doesn't appear anywhere in
the article (AFAICT).

~~~
jotm
Has wine gone bad?

Yeah, some assholes are selling wine from concentrate as real wine. It has
gone really bad.

------
ousta
there are two key problems

overall most of the people who drink wine haven't really tried once in their
life a really good wine. and im not talking price wise.

the common palate that those kind of people like are woody wines or Ill say
wines that taste like wood chips. even big bordeaux name do it that way and
mix that with pesticides and lot of other ingredients.

the greatest estate on earth, Romanee Conti has always been doing "Natural
Wines" free of pesticides and only with a little to none additives beyond
grapes. this is what wine should be. POINT.

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misiti3780
I quit drinking "non-natural" wines 3 years ago and have not looked back. They
are more interesting and give you less of a hangover (less sulfur). Robert
Parker needs to be against natural wines because he put alochol-bomb Bordeauxs
on the map in 1982. Responsible people (that can afford to) prefer to eat
organic vegetables and cage free chicken + beef - why not take it full circle
with your beverage also

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emodendroket
I'm very curious to try sour, cloudy wines, and think I've been motivated to
find one.

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kleiba
From the headline (and given that I was looking at HN), I literally thought
this was going to be a piece on a potential vulnerability in the windows-
compatibility software.

[https://www.winehq.org/](https://www.winehq.org/)

Quite surprised to find out it's actually an article on the drink.

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ingmarheinrich
I literally thought this was about the Windows emulator.

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sjg007
Buy based on the region.

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SlowRobotAhead
_" In 2000, a French government report noted that vineyards used 3% of all
agricultural land, but 20% of the total pesticides. In 2013, a study found
traces of pesticides in 90% of wines available at French supermarkets."_

Ok, that seems like legitimate concerns.

 _" Wine is regularly passed through electrical fields to prevent calcium and
potassium crystals from forming, injected with various gases to aerate or
protect it, or split into its constituent liquids by reverse osmosis and
reconstituted with a more pleasing alcohol to juice ratio."_

Pearl clutching nonsense. Does sound a lot like antivaxxer concerns right
there.

Not sure who to believe here, but I'll lean towards organic wines that used
efficient machines and process if I was concerned over the "GMO ARE ALWAYS BAD
CROWD" that would rather see the world starve.

~~~
simion314
My family makes wine just for ourselves(we live in a village) no tech or
chemicals are used but the taste is not bad, I do not understand why they say
it should taste like vinegar.

~~~
eftychis
It doesn't and shouldn't taste like vinegar. Same here regarding family wine
production. Note families tend to share their wine among themselves, so there
is some comparison. You can taste the difference if there is some additive or
it is industry produced. It is just different.

Personally, I find the term "natural wine" kind of laughable (I hope) and a
result of marketing. Techniques used in the industry are towards making wine
more average and consistent over the years. Not sifting your juices and
checking over the yeast, just means you won't know if your wine sucks till
it's ready. Hence a significant portion of years will just taste bad, with a
few of them being acceptable. You still need to intervene to get true gems
(controlled environment etc), as the article implies. There is still a lot of
oversight going on.

>> According to this view, natural wine is a cult intent on >> rolling back
progress in favour of wine best suited to >> the tastes of Roman peasants. I
think this hostile sentiment is unwarranted. Wine in general has gotten much
better over the years (consistency and taste) as we know much more about the
process. I can see why French winemakers want consistency, but I would argue
they could label possibly inconsistent wines with a new term than branding
them as "garbage".

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__jks__
Seems to still run fine on my Linux VM. :)

~~~
paulddraper
Yeah, it was news to me too.

Then I remembered than non-hacker stories get posted to hacker news.

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johnboyer
Oh, I thought this was some kind of play on words for the Wine software, turns
out it's literally wine.

~~~
tangue
Yeah I was thinking about the Wine 'emulator' too when I saw the title. Guess
we should spend less time on HN.

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partycoder
Whenever I hear or read "wine", I interpret it as "fermented juice".

The more you keep in mind that wine is just fermented juice, the less
susceptible you are to snobs, enthusiasts or people selling you $100+ juice.

Then, listening to a snob feels like listening to a fortune teller fraudster.
e.g.: you are "cursed" until you try this elixir called wine that will change
your life.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fortune_telling_fraud](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fortune_telling_fraud)

