The Neuroscience of Wine | Hacker News Reader

The Neuroscience of Wine

nautil.us

28 pointsdnetesn40 comments

It's kind of funny that such a more-or-less linear scale of quality based on price and critics' ratings prevails in the minds of so many wine drinkers. I love wine, and I've definitely fallen into this trap before too. Now that I think about it, wine is a little like mountain biking. There are bad trails, and really amazing trails, and trails that are kind of meh. It would be absurd to obsess over only riding singletrack rated 90 or above by a professional mountain biker.

Yup. There are many fantastic 'cheaper' wines, and even many French winemakers are now producing non-traditional, cheery wines meant to be consumed immediately.

I know I'm not always in the mood for a 'big' wine, with all the fanfare and ceremony. Sometimes something light and easy drinking hits the spot.

I have a rather soft spot for beaujolais nouveau. Hard to spend much money on this and if the vintage is OK then rather yum.

I've always had a theory that everyone would hate the taste of wine and other alcohol if it didn't give us a buzz. In other words, our brains make us like it to get more.

I base this on my early hatred of the taste and the later liking. I know this isn't much evidence but I think it could possibly be true.

All sorts of things are acquired tastes, not just booze. Also tastes tend to change by age so some of the effect you describe could be an effect of most people starting to encounter alcohol around roughly the same age

Very similarly, I once had a pain pill addiction and I would chew them up (Hydrocodone APAP). I dunno if you have ever chewed up a pill, but they are awful... very bitter. During my addiction, they would taste almost sweet when I chewed them up.

This theory doesn’t really explain why more expensive wine tastes so much better.

2 options spring to mind for me 1) Placebo effect - you know it's expensive, so your mind makes it taste better 2) It's expensive /because/ it tastes better

edit:

Although, if we run with the hypothesis it only tastes nice because of the alcohol content - alcoholic drinks are usually taxed according to their proof (in UK at the very least), therefore a wine with higher % will be more expensive than a weaker wine, all other things being equal.

I tend to think that hypothesis 2 is the more likely. I like good wine, but I love it when I get a good wine for a low price. I get far more pleasure out of drinking good cheap wines than I do out of drinking good expensive wines.

Also pointing towards hypothesis 2 is that unreliable wine regions are on average cheaper than consistent regions (all other things being equal). The best value wines in my experience are wines of a good vintage from a marginal region. The history of the region prevents a producer being able to charge a premium when they actually have a great product.

Can you give any examples of great wines from marginal regions? This sounds like a great strategy for finding great wine at a decent price, but I'm not enough of a connoisseur to know where to start.

At the end of the day it's all farming. Granted one region can have more consistent rainfall and temperature but there is still a pretty wide variance. Even in the same area one winemaker may be more talented and know when to pick, etc.

I think certain areas are very overhyped and thus receive a price premium. I tend to enjoy the general flavor of Paso Robles more than Napa for instance even though the 2nd is usually much more expensive.

At the end of the day making wine is still very high touch and manual and I am happy to support the industry. I do miss the days not so long ago when wine tasting was at most $10. Last weekend I went to a place in Napa where it was $40 and they only had one wine to taste! O.o

Well, cheaper wine probably has defects (things that shouldn't be there)

On the other hand, cheap (but not so much) wine is usually sweeter, which might explain the findings of the article (that people dislike more expensive wines)

Drink strong spirits diluted in water, see if you like

I think also taste is desensitized with time

on an individual basis this may be true, but broadly speaking i can think of a number of counter examples

vinegar, cranberry juice, ume, ..

OT -- My mouth waters just thinking of ume... how can someone not like it!

i worked at a wine distributer on the upper east side in manhattan in the late aughties

you could see the changes happening in real time

the industry was moving toward what they called 'priced to drink'

gone were the days of hoarding wine for years to be opened in fanfare, now buyers wanted bottles you could drink the same night you bought it

the best wine i have ever had was when i was working as a bus boy at a fine dining restaurant

one of my tables was a regular who always payed the corking fee and brought in six bottles of his own.. our sommelier loved him

as i was clearing his table he stopped me and offered me a sip of his last bottle on the table

what i tasted was unlike any wine i had ever tried

to say it was 'good' would be untrue, the wine tasted like dirt, or more specifically white granite crushed into a fine dust

i could taste the color of the stone in the earth that the vine was grown

More or less on topic - anyone have a favorite $5-10 bottle of wine? There must be some oenophiles here willing to make a recommendation to a broke college student.

I don't know about $5-10, but I can make a $10-20 suggestion. I've recently gotten into Frappato (a Sicilian varietal that tends to have a really nice mix of minerally, fruity, and spicy flavors), and they often are a really good value.

The Valle Dell'Acate is one I think is great. http://m.wine-searcher.com/find/valle+dell+acate+frappato+vi...

I'll save up and give it a try, thank you!

The classic from my own broke college days was the various "two buck Chuck" store-brand wine labels from Trader Joe's.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Shaw_wine

It makes for great fun during blind wine tastings, too!

But that's loaded with arsenic [0].

[0]: http://www.medicaldaily.com/trader-joes-2-buck-chuck-and-oth...

I'm very familiar with the good Mr. Shaw at this point; looking for something "fancier". Great rec though, it has unparalleled value.

I also went through a Riesling phase (various blue-colored bottles from Germany, mostly). Bottles were in the $10 range, varied a bit in acidity and fruit, but were generally quite drinkable.

"Fancy" is a dangerous preference in wine, though! Wine does get better in the $20-$30 range, because some wines cost more to produce. (oak, late harvest, estate-grown, old vines, some varietals, etc.)

Second Riesling - if you like them sweeter, I'd throw out Liebfraumilch, Hock and Gewurtzraminer too.

I'll also mention you want European Riesling - the bottles from New Zealand/Australia can tend to have a slight petrol taste to them.

There are also some non-sweet Gewurztraminer, a German colleague once brought us a bottle, it was great.

In Alsace we also have Edelzwicker. Those are "vins d'assemblage", ie blended wine. They can be both great and cheap. You'll have to sample a few of them as quality and taste can vary quite a lot.

One of my favorite is the Klevener d'Heiligenstein, there's a Wikipedia article about it in English (Wikipedia never cease to amaze me !): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Klevener_de_Heiligenstein

I always go get a few bottles when I visit my family, at a local producer who has an organic winery. The price varies depending on several factors but the cheapest ones are about 5-6€ a bottle and they're great.

There're decent Spanish and French reds at Trader Joe in that range. I haven't had a bad Rioja one yet.

Spanish wines will give you the best bang for your buck if you are on the east coast of the USA.

If you are in Australia (like me) then have a look at the Wine section of my blog [1]. I try to write about all the good wines I find.

1. https://www.tillett.info/category/wine/

If you're in the US I highly recommend checking to see if you have a local owner run wine retailer. One that preferably hosts wine tasting nights. I used to sell wine b2b and was amazed at the level of care most of them have for their trade.

Find one that knows his range and visit/talk to him regularly and he should be able to point you in the right direction. I've always found the language used to describe wine outside of expert to expert to be too imprecise, and rely on comparison too much, to be useful. A retailer however will be able to pick up from you trying X and not liking it and trying Y and liking it, that Z is a good next purchase to try.

Jug wine burgundy.

Assuming you're in the US and have a favorable tax environment, you might have some luck with Montepulciano d'Abruzzo. It's generally an earthy wine with relatively low acidity and tannins which means it will be easy going. It's usually more interesting than similarly priced New World wines. It seems pretty hardy as well -- I've only bought one bottle that was faulted (out of many, many bottles) and that was just a little Brett and it was still drinkable.

You might also be able to find a $10 Chianti Classico. That will give you more structure which will make the wine feel a bit more "refined".

Also check out Cotes du Rhone reds. These will often be cheaper than the more famous regions in France but share a lot of the "refined" characteristics of their more well known counterparts. One of the best wines I've had recently was Cotes du Rhone (sorry, didn't get a pic of the label) and held up favorably to a Burgundy I had brought (to the lunch) at 4x the price.

Echoing what someone else wrote here, find a local wine seller. Wine is such a complex topic you really need someone to point you in the right direction. Wine is also a great way to meet interesting people. A local wine seller is a good place to start.

I suppose presence of brett in a wine is never a good thing? It can often be a feature of beer.

Look at Spanish wines and buy at random in your price range. Out of 10 wines, 2 will be undrinkable swill you tip down the sink, 5 will be drinkable, but boring, 2 will be good, and 1 will be fantastic. When you hit the fantastic wine then buy as much as you can of that wine. Repeat :)

Instead of pouring the bad ones down the sink, if they're not extremely bad, cook with them! I've saved some "meh" red wines by cooking a boeuf bourguignon, and some white ones to do a sauce au beurre blanc for example.

This is certainly an option, but bad wines can ruin good food in cooking. As a general rule if the wine is too bad to drink then it is too bad to cook with.

An alternative is to return the wine to the store for a refund. I have only ever done this a few times when the wine was very obviously faulty.

The most interesting faulty wine I have ever had was one where the wine ruined my taste buds such that every wine that I tasted after that on the night tasted terrible (it did this for my wife too). I opened about a half dozen bottles of wine over a few hours to see how long this effect lasted - it lasted the night, but luckly by the next day everything was back to normal. I almost wished I had bought up more bottles of this wine to give to my enemies :)

Have a look out for Chilean Casillero del Diablo [0]. Their regular range sells for between GBP5.99 and 7.99 in the UK (there's GBP1.90 of duty and 20% VAT in those prices - we have ridiculous alcohol duty rates in the UK).

I can vouch for all of their reds - Malbec, Cabernet, Carmenere....even their Merlot is a decent thing.

[0]: http://www.casillerodeldiablo.com/?lang=en

I joke with my roommate that I should buy stock in that winery. I almost always have a bottle of their Carmenere on hand. I was also pleasantly surprised by the juicy fruitiness of their Pinot Noir, but haven't found it since!

One note though- they run $10-15 where I'm at- which makes sense given the conversion between USD and GBP. I'm pretty sure the user asking is from the US. So a bit more expensive than they're hoping for. Edit: Those taxes are crazy btw, I think in my state it's 5% on wine.

> I joke with my roommate that I should buy stock in that winery

Heh....you and me both. I'm a real fan of South American wine.

My pal, who was an employee of Oddbins (now defunct but was decent high street off-license [liquor and wine store]) had the good fortune of winning a works-paid ten day trip to Chile and Argentina to visit Concha y Toro's winerys (and some other producers). Back then they also used sell these other fab wines under the "Wine Maker's Lot" label which is what got me hooked on Chilean wines.

I love this Rabbit Ridge Allure de Robles and it is sometimes available at Trader Joes for about $5. Normally it's $10 but buying by the case has steep discounts: http://goodcheapvino.com/bargain-alert-5-%E2%80%93-rabbit-ri...

More info: https://www.rabbitridgewinery.com/red-wines.html

My wife and I are members of their winery in Paso Robles, California and always really enjoy their wine. I consider them a great value (which is true of Paso in general).

I'm not a wine drinker, but when I listen to people drinking, I noticed some frequently occurring patterns, for example:

> normally, I drink only […] wine but I somehow like this one, too.

> The label says this one is very […], but I actually find it rather […]

> I like [bottle A]. > I like [bottle B]. > I like [bottle C].

Personally, when I hear things like this and read articles like [1] I can't help but take wine tasting for complete BS. Then again, I don't get anything out of that, except that I won't have a nice time with friends sipping alcohol and babbling random stuff.

[1] http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0093934X01... (Abstract of the abstract: wine tasters can't even distinguish red wine from white wine by taste or odeur.)

I don't think anyone with zero wine experience could tell the difference between a Burgundy and a Bordeaux. At the same time, I don't think there's anyone with a normally functioning nose and tongue that couldn't tell the difference with the right training.

I think people are dismissive of wine because it carries a lot of socioeconomic baggage. If we were talking about beer, however, I doubt you would say you couldn't tell the difference between a stout and a pilsner or a really hoppy IPA and a lambic. Now, if you had never had any of those before, you'd need to learn the vocabulary and the flavors associated with them. Once you did you'd easily be able to detect and talk about the differences.

Wine is no different. I imagine that someone pointing out a Bordeaux is either a Left Bank or Right Bank would either sound like BS or incredibility pretentious, but understanding what grape varieties dominate those two wine regions and how they influence the taste makes it pretty easy to tell them apart.

Understanding wine isn't necessary for enjoying it, but for the most part it is necessary for being able to buy a wine in a shop or order one in a restaurant you're going to be happy with. Unfortunately wine is a mine field. Price and quality are loosely correlated and quality varies greatly from vineyard to vineyard -- even in the same region. It can also vary from year to year within the same vineyard.

Unless you're an expert, the best wine is usually curated. Find someone who has wine as a hobby or find a shop that makes good recommendations and you'll really start to appreciate wine. There's something about good wine that really transcends a normal drinking session.

Also, don't be shy about asking a shop for an inexpensive but good wine. In my experience the people who really know wine will always look for value and will probably spend less on average than someone who drinks wine to try to impress people.

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