How big data can help you pick better wine
quid.com
quid.com
You have to understand that wine descriptions are nothing more then marketing message that have very little resemblance to what is inside of the bottle. It would be interesting to see how those description change during the time as this message is changing all the time to catch the current trend.
Wine market is actually quite simple: you have few tiers of wine/wineries: from your basic mass market wines to mid tier to premium and ultra premium. Each category have some price point and higher the price better fruit (should) come to it.
There are differences in between the regions, but lower level wines are usually same no matter the marketing message and premium wines are usually very different and special in each own way anyway.
> A Quid network shows 3,380 nodes, where each node represents a description and review of a single bottle of Bordeaux-style red wine from Wine.com.
FWIW, this is a topic we've explored in a few ways at VinePair:
* https://vinepair.com/wine-blog/how-much-do-the-labels-on-win...
* https://vinepair.com/articles/wine-industry-touch-consumers/
* And a more humorous look at these descriptions @ https://vinepair.com/robert-robot/
Second problem is (and there is even statistical proof) that after wine pass some threshold of kinda good wine, the resulting score is random. This is caused by few things: your mood, what you drink before it, anticipation, the meal and even music.
Scoring (and recommending) wine and selecting what you like is very complicated subject and probably best way is still ask some good wine buyer, describe what you like and he might recommend wines he likes that loosely fits your description.
> ...probably best way is still ask some good wine buyer, describe what you like and he might recommend wines he likes that loosely fits your description.
Best advice I've gotten/give is find an importer/distributor (eg Kermit Lynch) and rely on their selections.
I'm also curious about what wines you're getting over $10/bottle that are not drinkable. Here in the Netherlands we have fairly cheap wine, but not outrageously cheap by any measure, and the majority of what I drink is 6-10 euros/bottle. I don't think I've ever gotten an "undrinkable" bottle over 6 euros. The only "undrinkable" bottle I can remember buying in recent memory was part of a sale - some "fancier" wine at 5 euros a bottle if I remember - and though I don't think it was corked the taste was off enough that I decided to toss the bottle.
Bigger problem with wines in region of 5 - 15 euros is that they are boring. They taste like generic wines and nothing more. I put aside those wines and use them for cooking.
Also important to note that more money == better wine is not linear. For me (and most people) it does not take much money to get to a 'good' wine. Having drank wines in all price ranges ($5 big bottles to $1000 Chateau Margaux/Laffites - never had a DRC though not sure that's even possible now with all the fakes out there, but I digress), I have hard time spending more than $20 on a bottle nowadays and would prefer $10-$15.
Then I have at least some background on what I am drinking and if I find some winery I might like, I try to taste multiple wines and if I like them I just keep buying it. During the years I found some good selection for any kind of occasion. (Yes and most of the wines I buy are usually 10 - 15 USD + few more expensive for some special occasions).
I used to know a couple people where wine was a status symbol, and that's how I got to taste some insane things. Personally, I look at wine as you do and want to know about the history, culture, tradition, love (for lack of a better word) that went into babying a finicky vine like the grape and turning it into something that can be so complex and delicious.
The funny thing about all this is that his big data quest for more good wine was launched because of the same reason I enjoy wine: It was his brother-in-law's recommendation that found him his favorite, not crunching the #cassis #vanilla #persistentfinish numbers. And he's doing this to find bottles similar to the one from a beloved family member, most of which are far more expensive (eyeballing the graph), but if I were him, I don't know if I could ever find a better bottle than "my brother-in-law's wine." Isn't sentimentality worth more than the data, especially when working with the most fickle data-set of all?
Also, come on, don't make a post like this and not give us the list!
* (We were drinking Troublemaker, a Paso Robles blend, which I swear is 50% syrah and 50% limestone.)
I don't care so much about his list, but being able to use the same engine he did with my own starting point would be great.
On a side note, I wonder how the recommendations are influenced by the audience. i.e. wine.com is presumably used by US customers, so perhaps it could explain why French wines are described in certain ways compared to California. But you might get the opposite if you look at a European website.
I tried finding the file with the list of all the wines and the predicted prices. I didn't even know enough to name the file correctly.
I think the large companies are very consistent with their product. They have many sources for their juice and because of that their product will be more average. The small companies can have years where they do everything right and create a great product, but it's not like they can just change their price to reflect the better quality.
http://www.economist.com/blogs/graphicdetail/2017/05/daily-c...
It defies common sense to think all wine is equal quality. The fact that there's much nonsense in the wine world doesn't mean it's all nonsense.
We'd need to see much stronger evidence than what has been presented.
Yes. Or as @mhoye on twitter put it: "FACT: most "big data" is actually two small datas standing on each other shoulders wearing a trenchcoat and sunglasses."