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Comment by mpol | Hacker News Reader

And still I do like my Pinot Noir a bit watery red :)

I don't really know what is happening in this context. Maybe a lot of people have not much taste, or cannot disciminate between different tastes or things?

I don't understand anything about the words that go along with wine and beer reviews. I don't understand anything about using words like chocolate or nuts in describing the taste of wine or beer.

I do know what I like in my mouth, but that is also very subjective. It also changes over time and can differ from day to day. Some days I like a bitter hoppy beer, some days a fresh pilsner. Some days I like a softer red wine, some days it may have a 'bite'.

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I think that the most important thing is development of your own taste, so this study is by most a distraction.

To me this study shows that novice students of the sommelier order were too biased to apply red wine terminology when the wine was just red colored white wine.

It does not show any deeper knowledge.

Now about discussion of our personal experience (my own based on Western-Europe).

I am personally more a Bordeaux person. I have discovered that there is clear distinction between Bordeaux and Bourgogne (Pinot Noir) wines and in general I do like Bordeaux more. That is, price wise, I would choose Bordeaux over Bourgogne any time.

Now being a general Bordeaux consumer, I could say that based on my personal experience, it is hard to beat it in similarity. At least in our market in my experience none of the Californian, South-American, South-African, Australian wines have came close to wines from Bordeaux. Not that these are bad wines, they are just not that interesting that anything else I could pick up from my supermarket.

What I want to say - many out of France producers are after some general commodity "good" wine, forgetting their specialty.

Novelty plays a part in this too.

So does the amount imbided in a single go.

Sipping tastes different from drinking and gulping. If an 'expert' doesn't know that, and isn't controlling for those variances, then their opinion is not going to be terribly rigorous.

Notably, Pepsi Cola made great use of these types of tricks for their advertising campaign re: "Take the Pepsi Challenge".

Much of taste is more subtle and experiential than many realize.

I can't remember the reference but, from what I remember, the moral of the story from the 'Pepsi Challenge' was to disregard what people say they prefer the taste of and to pay intention instead to what people actually buy.

I took part in a Pepsi challenge at a water park as a kid. I did and still prefer Coke, but the cute girl running the booth would get excited and give me a prize if I picked Pepsi. So not being an idiot I picked Pepsi, if you’ve ever had both it’s extremely easy to tell the difference.

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