The Jefferson Bottles (2007) | Hacker News Reader

The Jefferson Bottles (2007)

newyorker.com

41 pointsmisiti378013 comments

So much around wine is bullshit. I lived in Bordeaux for a year and was involved in wine tourism indirectly. It's all about emotion, the placebo effect and social proof. Good article. I lol'd at the "notes of undergrowth" in one section. Wonder what undergrowth tastes like and how she knows. (FT wine reviewer)

Maybe "undergrowth" is https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geosmin

Usually undergrowth means mushroomy, savoury, usually characteristic of pinot noir especially from Burgundy. I've been told it's increased by including stems in fermentation. It is a thing and it can be tasted; I'm not sure undergrowth is the best word for it, but it's a translation on a French word approximately meaning forest floor: the mulch of rotting leaves etc. It's more about smell as a component of taste than actual experience of eating rotting leaves.

There are undoubtedly different flavours in differently made wines. Spend time tasting and it's evident that grape, region, style and age all have big effects. But pairing, sequencing and intoxication also affect how wine is perceived, apart from the psychological effect of price / label, and ultimately it's subjective. Some people like alcoholic grape juice. Others like loads of tannins because it's what they associated with wines they were told were "big". Fashions change too.

Drink around and buy more of what you like, is my rule.

Ever described something as "tasting like s%#t"?

This sounds so much like art forgery. No one wants to really dig too much since there's so much money at stake.

Btw, I've got the PS-1 that Tom Hall used to write the code for DooM if anyone is interested. ;)

What is a PS-1? PS/2 I've used but never heard of PS1

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_PS/1

It was compact and had an interesting style of case: plastic and clearly "designed" with style in mind. I just discovered that Richard Sapper was involved in some PS/1 design.

Seems more of a treatise on what the rich kids of the 0.1% do to stave off their boredom after having everything in life given to them.

Isn't it unreal that there are people who spend millions of dollars to figure out if 200 year old bottles of booze are really 200 years old?

I don't normally rage against the rich, but reading this article made me fantasize about locking a couple dozen raging alcoholics in Bill Koch's wine cellar for a week.

"He especially loved wines that predated the phylloxera epidemic of the late nineteenth century, when a grape-vine pest decimated Europe’s vineyards, forcing growers to replant with phylloxera-resistant rootstocks from North America."

So we are all drinking New World wines. I was unaware of this and I find it sort of satisfying to know about.

Do note that this is just the rootstock, on which all of the traditional varieties are then grafted. Very common in agriculture and horticulture in general.

> The most basic difference between Old World and New World wines is geographic: "Old World" refers to the traditional winegrowing regions of Europe, while "New World" refers to everything else.[0]

So while the root stock is technically "New World" I wouldn't characterise the wines themselves as such.

As an analogy, you could describe Java as an OO language but if you use it to write a program in a procedural style that doesn't make your program OO.

[0]: http://www.winespectator.com/drvinny/show/id/5204

If you enjoyed this, I can recommend The Billionaire's Vinegar, which is a great book about this sort of thing.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com