
Wine tasting is bullshit - sxp
http://io9.com/wine-tasting-is-bullshit-heres-why-496098276?
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camperman
Strange article. I've spent a lot of time in one of the finest winelands in
the world (Stellenbosch) and I used to be a supertaster (with blindfolded
tests to prove it to sceptical friends) and I've blended some of my own.

It's definitely all very personal, subjective and prone to loads of outside
influences. Are the limitations of language partially at fault? Probably. Are
wine reviewers pompous? Mostly. But is there really an incredible variety of
flavors and textures in red wine alone? Yes there is. And don't get me started
on cognac and whiskey.

~~~
freework
If there is such a large variety of flavors that can be detected, then why
does the scientific data suggest otherwise?

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danielharan
Citation needed.

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kbenson
Maybe he means this[1]. BTW, It's from the article we're discussing...

[1]:
[http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405274870368380457453...](http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703683804574533840282653628.html)

~~~
danielharan
Well, that only says that a single study showed that "flavor-trained
professionals cannot reliably identify more than three or four components in a
mixture". Surely you or people you know can reliably identify several more
when not part of a mixture - or even identify one mixture as rose and smoke,
while another could be rose and berry.

camperman's point that "there really an incredible variety of flavors and
textures in red wine alone" probably isn't very controversial to anyone that's
actually tasted more than a few bottles.

~~~
kbenson
Okay, I can accept that.

It just struck me as odd to ask for a citation when the article that's
referenced uses one for that point. Possibly you meant to force them to look
deeper into the citation to support their position. If so, as a third party,
it's confusing. Considering it now, I may be guilty of having done that in the
past, regretfully.

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femto
Another data point: I once threw a party, to which people had to bring a wine,
priced between $10 and $15. On arrival, each wine was placed in a numbered
container, so the identity of each wine was unknown, and attendees were given
a score sheet. My contribution was a $5/bottle and $30/bottle wildcard.

The $5 wildcard came out top. I also had a "slop bucket", into which all the
dregs from the bottles went. The slop bucket was served up and came middle, of
the pack, next to the $30 bottle. The bottom wine was a truly dreadful, dirt
cheap cask wine that someone had brought and decanted into a bottle for a
joke.

At the end of the night, the scores and identities were revealed.
Interestingly, some people began to revise their opinions, saying how the
expensive wine was good, but they "weren't quite sure", so down rated it.

The other party trick that night was trying to distinguish between red and
white wine whilst blindfolded and holding one's nose. Apart from one person,
the results were more or less random.

~~~
derefr
> saying how the expensive wine was good, but they "weren't quite sure", so
> down rated it

This actually seems perfectly valid to me. One of the universal qualities of
"expensive-tasting" things is that their tastes are usually _complex_ \--it
takes a while to work through exactly what makes them good. They're meant to
_also_ be good in the "food" sense, yes, but more than anything, they're
supposed to be _art_ \--of the kind you would stand in a gallery analyzing,
trying to figure out how the time and place of its creation influenced its
style, etc.

With no training, you'll usually ignore flavor entirely, and just go for the
wine that has the most sugar and a decent amount of alcohol. It might not
actually be the one you most prefer in the moment (though it certainly could
be)--but when you're asked for a rating, it's the one you can _justify_ , and
our post-hoc justifications for preferences frequently overwrite our (weaker)
memories of experiential preferences.

~~~
ryandvm
What a load of crap. If you need proper training to tell if something is
"good" then you're not detecting goodness at all. All you're doing is engaging
in pattern matching with a bunch of other pretentious assholes.

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boyter
It's not total bullshit. For the record I am not a wine buff (more interested
in beer personally) but it doesn't take long for the average drinker to learn
to recognize the difference in taste between grape varieties in new world
wines and regions in old. It also doesn't take long to learn the difference
between a good and bad wine.

That said do I think you can score a wine though? No. You can certainly pick
between a selection of wines and rank them in order of what you prefer. You
can certainly have a preference for style/type food combo icewine and botrytis
for dessert or Riesling with seafood. This is the benefit in wine tasting in
my opinion. Not impressing your friends with a 98 score wine but matching food
appropriately.

~~~
Steko
"doesn't take long to learn the difference between a good and bad wine."

If you have to teach people to distinguish good and bad isn't that an
admission that the whole thing is bullshit?

~~~
mike_herrera
Not in the slightest. As a counter-example, challenging food and music comes
to mind.

~~~
pessimizer
How are those counter-examples?

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firebones
In the same way that being able to tell the difference between good and bad
code takes time for a novice. Just because you have to learn to distinguish
what makes some code more easily understood, easier to maintain, more robust,
etc., doesn't make the notion of telling good from bad a bogus pursuit.

~~~
Steko
The code analogy is silly. With wine (or food) we're talking about a
fundamental sense we all have. Everyone can eat and drink and either the stuff
tastes good to people or it doesn't. And that's the point of the food/drink to
begin with. The point of code is not generally to appeal to novices' innate
sense of code aesthetics.

 _Chef: You stupid amateurs could never appreciate my noodles!

Tampopo: But people who eat noodles are all amateurs. So why make noodles
amateurs can't appreciate?_

------
patrickmay
A whimsical yet austere post, heavy on the bombast but with hints of
compassion and, for the discerning reader, notes of plaintive wishfulness,
with a bitter yet wholesome finish.

~~~
tkellogg
That one's got to be $30, at least! Probably a red...

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sologoub
This is actually quite funny - the author obviously chased numbers and by
inference prestige of the wine. Yeah, the reviews are BS, but who cares?

I don't drink wine for the label or points it earned. In fact, my favorite
wine comes from a region known for sacrilegious levels of fruitiness (Paso
Robles) and I really enjoy being able to taste/smell the barrel toasting (a
no-no in refined wines).

Bottom line, I enjoy every second of this experience, whether it's real or in
my head, I really don't care... And neither should you! :)

~~~
equalarrow
Mmmm, hellz yah, I love that area! Excellent for some of my favs - Zin's,
Syrah's - yummy! My wife and I belong to a few vineyard's clubs in the SLO
area. Beautiful scenery, beautiful wines. I always recommend this outside of
Napa if you're in CA for a visit or just looking for a good weekend.

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danielharan
That naive wine-drinkers prefer cheap wines is not a result of wine-tasting
being bullshit. It's a result of naive drinkers preferring sweetened wine, and
industry players greedily obliging.

Most people, given exposure over years, will prefer more better wines. You can
accelerate that process by tastings: 5-6 small glasses so you can properly
compare wines, repeated over a few weeks. This works even if people don't know
the prices, and without guidance from experts.

~~~
kbenson
That doesn't seem to address what the article was about at all.

I hate to say this, because it always sounds like you're being an asshole, but
I think it's warranted in some instances, in it's sincere form; Did you read
the article before posting?

~~~
danielharan
I most certainly did.

This was addressing the section towards the end, "The Exception": "among
amateur wine drinkers [...], the survey found [...] a negative correlation
between price and happiness".

Check the residual sugars in Menage a Trois, Apothic Red and similar wines.
They get that by adding concentrated grape juice, then enough chemicals to
stop those sugars from undergoing more fermentation. Lots of amateur wine
drinkers love that style.

If saying this makes me an asshole, so be it.

~~~
kbenson
_This was addressing the section towards the end, "The Exception": "among
amateur wine drinkers [...], the survey found [...] a negative correlation
between price and happiness"._

Fair enough, I didn't make that connection. For me the main take-away form the
article was that even critics have problems with repeatability and identifying
what I believed to be core identifying features.

 _If saying this makes me an asshole, so be it._

I meant "you" in the general sense, implying _I_ would sound like an asshole
for saying it.

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derefr
I think it's important to distinguish wine reviews done for the sake of
properly pairing a wine with the people who prefer that wine (clustering
analysis, basically), with reviews that try to rank all wines on some sort of
single-axis quantitative measurement (i.e. the Parker scale.)

The former is useful--read a review, see a bunch of adjectives you prefer in
your wines attached to something, go out and buy it where you otherwise
wouldn't have, enjoy yourself. The _latter_ , though, is agreed by even the
majority of the wine journalism industry to be a disgrace, driving prices both
up and down by creating an artificial power-law ranking for wines, where the
(good!) wines in the middle are ignored in favor of everyone competing over
$3500 bottles that happen to get 99 arbitrary "points."

~~~
kbenson
> The former is useful--read a review, see a bunch of adjectives you prefer in
> your wines attached to something, go out and buy it where you otherwise
> wouldn't have, enjoy yourself.

Is it? The article points to studies that correlate verbiage price.
Additionally, it makes a case that reviewers generally can't identify more
than six or so flavors in a wine. Combined with evidence that they often can't
even tell red from white, what chance is there the review will be accurate
about specifics within a category when they can't even be trusted to get the
category right?

~~~
derefr
> studies that correlate verbiage price

There are certain terms that do just mean "it tastes expensive," yes (and
reviewers that are paid by the word frequently whip out the wine-taster's
thesaurus to spew them all over the page to fill their quota.) But the kinds
of details I'm talking about aren't those--looking for, say, a "hint of
nutmeg" in a wine won't put you into a higher echelon of prices. It'll just
give you wines that taste more like nutmeg.

> it makes a case that reviewers generally can't identify more than six or so
> flavors in a wine

I don't see what's wrong with that. Six is already a lot of details to pick
out. By that point, you're getting down past the standards of the label and
into things like "orange zest", which really do let you discriminate a wine
with a flavor you might want to try from one that turns you off.

> they often can't even tell red from white

This isn't as shocking a pronouncement as it's made out to be. Here's the
quote:

> They called it "jammy," for example, and noted the flavors imparted by its
> "crushed red fruit."

This implies that they clearly _could_ tell it wasn't your average red--those
are the kinds of things you would say about a red (usually as a veiled insult)
when it doesn't have any tannin or oak in it, which tends to imply that it's
basically a white made with red grapes (that is, made with white-wine
processes, that don't seek to capture tannins.)

Whites and reds, although they seem like (and are treated like) separate
things, are really just a spectrum; there's no dividing point where a white
becomes a red, flavor-wise; there are whites that taste like reds, and reds
that taste like whites. The category is just about the color, nothing else.

~~~
kbenson
While not entirely winning me over, your argument at least attempts to explain
the problems brought forth in the article.

Considering how most other defenders have reverted to simple knee-jerk "it's
obviously not bullshit, I go tasting all the time" reactions, possibly without
even reading the linked article, I salute (and update) you.

Edit: refined text to clarify meaning. s/not exactly winning/not entirely
winning/

~~~
derefr
Really, I don't know that much about wine myself; I'm just making a weak
attempt at my uncle's usual stylings (he's a wine journalist working for, of
all things, a wine-kit manufacturer--so a bit of an apostate in the industry.)

Relevant article from him: [http://www.timswineblog.com/2011/01/robert-parker-
is-not-the...](http://www.timswineblog.com/2011/01/robert-parker-is-not-the-
worst-person-in-the-world)

------
prawn
"Wine tasting is bullshit" - what a load of link-baiting crap.

Wine tasting isn't just reviewers and their rankings. It's fun, it's poetic,
it's analytical, it's exploration and so on. Ultimately, you will like what
you like and no serious person in wine will tell you otherwise. Thinking more
about what you're tasting or how what you're using works, or why an
advertisement said something the way it said, and countless other examples are
a joy in life: understanding our world.

If you can buy your wine through cellar door tastings, you are more able to
pick things you like (adjusted for price) rather than be reliant on brands,
labels, price and the opinions of others. What you taste and how many
descriptors you feel you can assign is up to you and of course it will vary
from one person to another. I can't remember having ever bought something
based on the medals printed on the label; I have once or twice heard of a
surprise winner (e.g., $15 bottle taking out a competition) and wanted to try
it for myself. I think that's on par with hearing "critics are raving" and
checking out a film.

The courses I have done don't teach good vs bad but teach you to identify what
are considered to be faults - corked, brettanomyces, etc - but also note that
in some cases these are regarded as complexities by some. e.g, if you like
something, you like it. And ultimately help you identify regional differences,
varieties and so on.

Some people are happy to drive their car. Others like knowing how it works and
tinkering. Doesn't mean car knowledge is bullshit.

I really enjoy blind tastings and trying to guess years, regions and
varieties. My wife's family are very involved in wine (vineyard owner,
winemaker, wine sales, etc) and take blind tastings to ever more flowery
levels. There's a lot of name-dropping of regions and exotic varieties but
it's all in good fun as entertainment, and an excuse to try more.

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kmtrowbr
I have a spent a lot of time going "wine tasting" and derived a lot of
enjoyment from it. Here are some of my observations:

* The sense of taste is very influenced by experience. If something makes you sick (bad chicken), you can develop a lasting aversion to that taste. Conversely, if something makes you feel good over and over again (alcohol), over time you will start to like it, even if, that thing doesn't taste very good initially.

* The fact that the taste of wine, beer, booze ... is not simply a "good" taste like sugar or protein, makes it more "complex" and interesting. Candy = yum, but as you get older, it's kind of gross. Alcohol, on the other hand, stays interesting. This theory is not very scientific, but I think it has a grain of truth.

* Wine in the USA carries a heavy burden ... of Americans' feelings of cultural inferiority (in general, but originally towards Europe). "Wine tasting" even more so seems like an effete, silly, snobby thing to do. It's in the same neighborhood as the USA's love-hate relationship with France. It got put into our cultural code at our founding, and we still have it. "They think they're so cool and sophisticated. What a load of bull! And yet, it seems like there's something there that we don't understand." Argh, we can't seem to get over it.

* Anyways, my advice: just have fun and don't take the experts seriously, certainly don't feel inadequate. It is bullshit, it is an art -- in some domains, who can tell the difference?

If there's one thing that "wine tasting" can help you to do, it's just to PAY
ATTENTION to what you are tasting, and talk about it. We shove so much crap
into our face that we don't even really taste, and it's sad because "tasting"
can be a source of great pleasure.

Also, it can be fun to think of Wine Country as an especially epic bar crawl
that you go on when you're old and starting in the morning. This is when
drinking gets serious.

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runT1ME
Less bullshit than cancer research though, apparently?

~~~
kbenson
Indeed. Nice call.

For posterity sake, I'll drop a hint[1].

[1]: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5679685>

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jleyank
I can't answer for taste, as I don't drink wine. My wife does, and it's my job
to remember what she likes. The nose, however, can usually type a grape or at
least distinguish things like Cabernet with soft reds like Pinot Noir. Does
that mean they taste better or worse? No idea, but the combination of color
(intensity) and smell lets me guess the grape pretty well.

Given the repeated success of things like $2 buck Chuck, it seems that typical
people would do well with $4-14 bottles of table red or table white for most
applications. There's a lot of options in these price ranges.

My wife has obvious preferences for wine selection based on meals. So I have
to assume there's taste differences involved.

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SCdF
Isn't this just like anything that is obviously subjective though? Wine, beer,
food, fashion, cars, games, programming languages.

In fact, I'm struggling to think of a collection of things that people enjoy
that _can_ be objectively measured (with the arguable exception of sports
teams and the like, but that's only if you're judging them by their ability to
win games, not things like who gives the best game for spectators).

Targeting wine makes me think this is more of a "ha look at those elitist
jerks sipping on their wine we are the 99%" whine than anything else.

~~~
homosaur
I don't really think that's the case in this article since some of the
harshest criticism of wine tasters comes from the wine magazine guy.

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cdjk
I don't have a sense of smell (technically it's called anosmia for the
curious), and I completely agree. I find that most wine, especially red wine,
is fairly bad. White wine seems to be more consistent, but after reading this
article and some of the comments I wonder if it's because it's usually
refrigerated.

I've never done a blind red/white test. That sounds like an interesting
project for the weekend. I should put a bottle of red in the fridge.

Beer, on the other hand, is something that is both more consistent and more
varied. And usually cheaper.

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alexh
This article leans rather heavily on fallacious arguments. Taste is a weak
sense -> Wine tasting is bullshit. On a subjective measure people varied
within a range ( of only 8 points ) -> Wine tasting is bullshit. People are
subject to anchoring effects -> Wine tasting is bullshit Other senses play a
powerful role in perception -> Wine tasting is bullshit

Worrying argumentation. The studies themselves could be interesting though.

~~~
homosaur
The thing I got from the article is the idea that a wine is a set score like a
95 is arbitrary silliness and so much of the wine community is set up around
things like that. I do think that savvy consumers and aficionados have
realized this for ages and have grown out of simply looking at scores and more
strongly consider pairings and preferences. I, for instance, only really pay
attention to the first digit of the wine score. Most people that are well
schooled can pretty easily tell the difference between a 70 and a 90, I think
the bullshit factor comes in when you're trying to grade these out and say
this bordeaux is a 95 but this one is a 91.

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fortybillion
Has anyone ever debunked or repeated the food-coloured white wine test? I've
heard this one before and it always seemed very strange to me as white and red
wines have such clearly distinguishable characteristics.

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wordplay
Subjectivity doesn't mean it's bullshit, we might just be measuring the wrong
thing. Genetics + a oral chemistry test might be a far better predictor of
what wines you'll enjoy than an expert's opinion.

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prakster
Anyone have a story or experience of the difference between the Two Buck Chuck
(Charles Shaw wine) vs a high end vintage?

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rscale
Wine is a vivid reminder that we're not not just creating value, we're
creating _perceived_ value.

There are countless products that earn higher margins (and loyalty) because
customers like the story, the design or some other aspect of the product or
service that doesn't _really_ help the customer. But these things matter.

At the end of the day, we're not perfectly rational robots. We're people.

