Semiconductor CEO trying to make the world's best Pinot Noir | Hacker News Reader

Semiconductor CEO trying to make the world's best Pinot Noir

bbc.com

33 pointsmalchow50 comments

So he spends all his money making the facility and doesn't even bother building it in the Willamette Valley in Oregon? WV soil makes way better Pinot Noir than anywhere in California. All the tech in the world isn't going to turn good grapes into great grapes.

Typical tech billionaire, trying to solve a problem that doesn't exist and completely missing the basics.

And gets fleeced by a few enterprising consultants along the way I'm sure. A fool and his money and all that.

I would, however, support the idea of space wine. Grape vines enjoy tough conditions right? What's tougher than ISS?

~~space terroir~~

Your post sent me down a long hole about plants in space. The ISS has grown romanian lettuce to eat and even a sunflower [1].

1: https://blogs.nasa.gov/letters/2012/06/29/post_1340814534271...

According to the picture that was a sorry wilted sunflower.

You're crazy. Higher altitudes and steep slopes in California work very well for Pinot Noir. Pinot planted on flatland in the valleys, however, I would indeed leave alone.

Maybe, can't say I've ever had a PN from California that stacks up to the WV or Burgundy though.

I would encourage you to try say Littorai or another small-scale Sonoma coast producer. I also enjoy Toulouse from Anderson Valley. Both have much cooler climates than say Napa and focus on wine that is both Burgundian in style yet distinct. I certainly agree there are great wines from Willamette, but don't miss out on ours!

William Sylem from Russian River. Golden Eye from Anderson Valley. I think they both stack up very well though I will admit they are a bit less earthy than a typical Burgundy.

+1 for Russian River. Rodney Strong has a damn fine RR Pinot for a reasonable price.

Merry Edwards is just as good as Oregon (which I love). Her single vineyard stuff, in particular.

Elevation and slope are indeed important, but the comment was about soil, which is an equally important component of terroir. Burgundy is the standard for Pinot Noir, and WV certainly is closer than anything California offers in those aspects.

Pinot noir is really tough in general. If not for Burgundy, we probably wouldn't cultivate it, because it's really not that good elsewhere. WV is producing a pretty good product, but it still has some of that "whole fruit" element to it.

Of course, to each his own. California wine makers have recognized that they're not producing something like a Burgundy wine, and they have experimented in style. I don't enjoy it, personally, but I like that people are feeling free to experiment. Some people appreciate that distinct style on its own merits. I think it'd be good on pancakes. Nothing against CA either; I really don't like any new world PN.

> Pinot noir is really tough in general. If not for Burgundy, we probably wouldn't cultivate it, because it's really not that good elsewhere.

Have you forgotten about New Zealand?

Evidence mounting that author of parent is French. ;)

No, I addressed that: "Nothing against CA either; I really don't like any new world PN."

Again, at this level, it's getting subjective. NZ makes some good wine. I think the PN suffers similar detriments that California wine does: too much "whole fruit" or "jammy" character, and sometimes too vegetal like "bell pepper." Some of these might be the producer's choice. Then there are things that are just errors, especially bad handling of the oak.

If he can afford a $1000 barrel, I'm sure he can ship some of the WV soil to SV.

"Typical tech billionaire, trying to solve a problem that doesn't exist" - He's not trying to solve a problem. This is his serious-ish hobby.

+1 If the actual goal was to make the world's best Pinot Noir he would have built in the Oregon valley or in eastern Washington state. Santa Cruz Mountains has a few wineries because it's there, but not known for wine making, and certainly not for Pinot Noir.

My girlfriend's sister is a big-time Oregon wine snob (hates Pinot Noir oddly), but she claims "you can thank global warming for the great Oregon wine". Is this true? Has the quality gotten higher? I seem to recall hearing that Napa is starting to get a bit too hot.

From http://www.cbsnews.com/news/how-to-make-a-small-fortune/ :

  How do you make a small fortune? Start with a large fortune 
  and then open a winery.

Ive heard something similar from Richard Branson about airlines. "How do you become a millionaire? Start with a billion dollars and create an airline"

Well, there is no thing such as best wine. You can create most expensive wine or most scarce wine, but there is nothing like best wine, like there is no the best painting in the world.

I came in to make the same comment. It’s all a matter of taste, and even then you’d want variety. No one wants to eat the same thing every day, even if it started out as the best meal of your life.

The article didn't mention anything about why he thinks the SC mountains are good for Pinot. There's a lot of misinformation and lack of detailed journalism out there, in particular regarding how global warming will affect the varietals that are picky about temperature and soil conditions.

http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/future_tense/2014/1...

> A collapse in the roof of a gigantic tunnel being driven into a hillside sounds like a pretty dramatic event. But the entrepreneur TJ Rodgers is calm as he recalls what happened. "It's not like you see in the movies with rocks flying, and stuff like that. "It will kill you but it's kind of a slow motion thing, and you can walk [away] and stay in front of it," he explains.

I found this really interesting! A cave in is a small motion thing which you can walk away from.

Watch out Napa, this one Tech Millionaire is Disrupting the Wine Industry

... using this one weird trick!"

Aw. I thought the article was about how someone was going to synthesize better wine in bulk, like the "Wine 2.0" startup in Dogpatch.[1] They do well in blind tastings.

Synthetic meat is hard. But wine is just a liquid mixture.

[1] https://www.avawinery.com/

I'm curious, let's say these guys sucseed, and they partially, or fully commoditize wine via synthetics.

What happens then? will it really replace most wine production ? or is wine one of those things that people will just pay a lot more for "authenticity" ?

Definitely, seems to me a lot of people buy wine just to show it off, so there's no way wine production will be replaced completely. Especially high-end wines. Wine is a luxury good.

Why try to make "the best" version of something that is judged by purely subjective standards? Make something very good, and some people will consider it to be the best. Those become your best (heh) customers.

Haha of course it's TJ Rogers. I still remember hearing he got in a bit of a scuffle with Los Gatos when he decided to use dynamite to blow a hole in the side of a hill to make his wine cellar.

Article doesn't even talk about yeast. The whole thing sounds close to a factory to me, apparently the guy hasn't even worked with vignerons in France at all. Unlikely to happen.

It is funny how everybody goes crazy when talking about taxes and politicians taking our money and when CEOs do a lot worse with the extra money they take from us in the form of profit it becomes a BBC business news.

Taxes > Profit

The difference is I can shun a company making unfair profit and choose a competitor (in most cases at least) but I can't not pay taxes for any reason (even civil disobedience is hard to prove). In general, any company/institution where I voluntarily part with money will, and has to, have lower regulations (not zero) than an institution where I don't have a choice.

> The difference is I can shun a company making unfair profit and choose a competitor

You could but most of the times the companies become so huge they finance laws that turn the state part of their profit, a huge part of it coming from taxes (or lack of) too.

"take from us in the form of profit" doesn't really make sense, unless you're talking about healthcare or some other absolute essential.

Sounds like an expensive lesson in wine and perfection.

And since people can't tell most wines apart, what's the point?

http://www.realclearscience.com/blog/2014/08/the_most_infamo...

Most people can't tell a red from a white by taste.

The difference in pinot noir and say, cabernet sauv is like night and day, so I'm not sure what you're talking about.

Sure, but they probably meant "would an average person be able to differentiate TJ Rodgers Pinot Noir from another high quality winery's Pinot Noir"?

Most people could differentiate them, but wouldn't be able to identify the higher quality wine.

Burgundy pinot vs new world pinot? If they're a fan, they'd have little trouble spotting the Burgundy.

I agree, but the parent said average person, so I was thinking of someone less experienced.

This is exactly the problem; studies are done where random person who has a glass now and then can't tell food-coloring altered white from red, readers see "nobody can tell wines apart".

Well, the last statement doesn't imply that:

> Most people can't tell a red from a white by taste.

I most certainly can!

But I do agree, sometimes it's hard to judge the cheap wine vs the expensive ones, but we're talking $25 bottle to a $40 bottle. I don't have a lot of difficulty picking out the $8 vs the $25 from purely anecdotal experience. I am determined to double-blind myself at some point though.

There will always be a market for a high quality version of whatever you can think of.

but not at any price.

You think there's not a race to the top in the wine-as-status-symbol market?

https://www.wine-searcher.com/find/paulet+rsrv+louis+xvi+ext...

I think this is a common misconception. Various tests have asked ordinary people to determine what wine is expensive and what isn't. They can't.

(Also, if people know a wine is expensive, they don't enjoy it more. They enjoy it less. At least according to one well controlled study: http://www.wine-economics.org/aawe/wp-content/uploads/2012/1...)

That doesn't mean that very fine distinctions between wines cannot be independently and blindly detected by both experts and amateurs.

Prices are set at the margin [1]. Most people can't differentiate high-quality and low-quality wines. But some can. They are on the margin and will set prices.

As an anecdote, I can blindly identify with pricing in respect of certain regions and grapes, e.g. Valpolicella, Amarone and the Cabernets. (That is to say, I will blindly prefer the higher-priced bottles over lower-priced ones.) I am willing to pay a premium for those. With other grapes, e.g. Pinot Noir, my tastes don't seem to correlate with prices. (This is also true, with me, for whiskey and absinthe.)

[1] http://optionalreading.blogspot.com/2012/12/laws-of-price-pr...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com