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Comment by dejv | Hacker News Reader

The article display some cool use for NLP, but as a winemaker and wine judge I find methodology funny and flawed.

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.

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> 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.

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.

For me the wine is all about culture. I do like to read the profiles on wineries: history, how they work in vineyards, how they treat the wine in cellar, why they choose of what they do. What is the history of the region and how it was shaped during centuries (yeah, I am not really into new world wines).

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 found the history of New World wines interesting, esp. where the grapes came from. E.g.

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

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

Ah yes, wine and history go together so well. I've found that many (most?) people who like one like both. I took a wine tour once in Hvar, Croatia and it was really a history tour of the island with wine mixed in.

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.

Agree that using marketing descriptions provided by the winery isn't the best approach. It would be much more useful if the data used stuck to just the reviews (though _which_ reviewers are used is its own issue):

> 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/

Using user review are not very helpful as well. Each taster use different vocabulary and there are even different way to analyse wine: some people describe the flavours (this wine is strawberries, apple, lime) some, including me, are more of a structural tester (comparing "length" of a wine, width and character of the taste and after taste).

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.

Agree user reviews do prevent their own issues. One of those linked articles is about the confusion over the meaning of 'dry' in the contexts of sweetness and tannins.

> ...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.

Moreover, the "kinda good" level is not at a very high price point. I've never had an undrinkable bottle that cost over $15 (unless it was "corked"). A majority of wines I've tried over $10/bottle are very drinkable. I think it has to do with the amount of money it takes to literally put the wine in the bottle.

I'm very curious. When you say "undrinkable", what do you mean? I've heard a lot of wine fans say this and I've never really gotten a straight answer. Do you instantly pour out your glass and throw out the bottle? Do you finish your glass but throw away the bottle? Or maybe finish your glass but save the rest of the bottle for cooking?

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.

For me undrinkable = faulty wine, but those are very rare these days. I just throw those wines away.

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.

I had a heuristic that the flashier and more colorful the label the worse the wine was. However, bad wine makers have seemingly adapted to this and now have understated labels.

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