What makes a champagne vintage great? Ask a deep learning model | Hacker News Reader

What makes a champagne vintage great? Ask a deep learning model

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52 pointslxm47 comments

I am throughly convinced that the most you should ever spend on Champagne is 50-80 dollars (ex a normal bottle of veuve clicquot), and only in extra special circumstances go near the 200 dollar price point. Anything above that is just paying for style over substance.

Specifically I taste tested several bottles based on an increasing scale of rarity and price. This included a 200 dollar bottle of dom, a 200 dollar bottle of La Grande Dame, and a one of a kind bottle of Dom stored properly in my friends basement since 1988 (a supposedly good vintage).

I have no skin in the wine game. I just don't like getting tricked by the luxury business. 50-80 is the sweet spot of quality and price, with diminishing returns in quality at the 200 price point Once you get above the top recent vintages, you are just paying for exclusivity not the product.

When it comes to bubbles, I believe the subjective dimensions of personal taste and disposable income are by far the largest determinants of what any one person "should ever" do.

Should here is in the sense of making the transition towards Veblen goods or not

I usually go with the small unknown vineyards. I've had a bunch of great bottles of champagne for 25-30 euros, always from smaller brands. The famous ones cost too much and are quite often not as good even...

As a French who grew not far from Champagne, I’m actually convinced the most you should spend on a bottle of Champagne is exactly 0 dollar. At an equivalent price point, you will find plenty of better sparkling wines all around. Buying Champagne really is buying the brand.

What non-Champagne alternatives would you recommend to wines such as Ulysse Collins Les Maillons Rose or Jacques Selosses Substance?

I'm curious what you would suggest with very fine bubbles such as found in Krug? Most Champagnes and for sure any American sparkling wines are lacking even when produced via méthode traditionnelle. I would love to find something similar that was substantially more affordable to make it more than a once every 5 years sort of thing.

I’m personally convinced the most you should spend on a bottle of Champaign is £10-15 on a bottle of Cremant De Bordeaux rather than Champaign. There will always be occasions when a bottle of Champaign is called for, but you likely have one that someone gave you as gift for that.

Most Cremant is as good as or better than Champaign at 2-3x the price.

We are particularly fond of this one: https://www.ocado.com/products/m-s-cremant-de-bordeaux-blanc...

I haven’t heard much from Bordeaux on crémants, but i can vouch for burgundy and loire for crémants that perform as well as many champagnes, for under $25.

The fact that you can't even seem to be able to spell the name of the product properly makes me doubt on your expertise regarding said product.

This seems a bit hostile. Where did they claim to be an expert? Are only experts allowed to respond on hacker news?

I think they were hostile indeed. At the same time, it's a worthwhile philosophical argument. Can it be considered rude to issue a claim when you don't hold the most basic knowledge?

I mean we're talking about the price of wine or champagne to buy. It's very low stakes debate so think you can pull any answer out of your ass because at the end of the day nothing matters and it's not very objective. It's all based on taste

I agree it doesn't matter in the moment, but it can matter in the aggregate. Essentially this is the question at the heart of whether social media is a net negative or positive for the world.

So, firstly I don’t claim to be an expert. I just know what we like to drink. My wife is much more knowledgeable on these things.

Secondly, and more importantly, you bring up an interesting point about spelling. Is spelling directly related to expertise or understanding of a topic. In my case probably not, I’m Dyslexic, spelling has been something that I have to actively work on every day. When I’m writing comments, email, documents or code, I’m constantly having to check myself.

Usually when I post to HN I end up editing the post a couple of time, after posting. I usually go back 5 minute later and reread the post, fresh eyes help to spot mistakes.

In this case it was 11.45 and I went to bed, my mistake. Should have reread the post, but there you go. I was careful to go and check how to spell “Cremant De Bordeaux” though, went to Google to check that one.

When I was younger, and other Dyslexic people I know, my lack of confidence in spelling effected my confidence in contributing to something. So my ask to people on the internet, when you call out a spelling mistake, don’t use it as an opportunity to gate keep or assert superiority over someone. I’ve come to terms with it, but it’s the type of comment that pushes people out of a community.

In general HN commenters are brilliant about these mistakes, a short comment pointing it out is all that’s required. Not judgment.

> Anything above that is just paying for style over substance.

What is wrong with paying for style? While I personally don’t find style valuable, a lot of people in this world do. Who are we to tell them what is valuable?

Nothing wrong with paying for style for style's sake.

I just don't like when people mistake style for quality, and then lure others into spending too much for it.

save 20 bucks and go with a really nice bottle of prosecco

Prosecco is a completely different wine made through a completely different process.

So, Franciacorta then, to stay in Italy and keep the Metodo classico :)

Sure, I’m obsessed with Annamaria Clementi (especially the rosé).

An absolute bargain compared with similar Champagne, but at around 150-200eur it’s still way above the prices discussed here.

Oh, and like any good and cheap sparkling wine, it’s very rapidly becoming hard to find.

yes obviously

Columbo: How can you tell a good wine from an average wine?

Frenchman: By, uh... the price.

— Columbo S03E02, Any Old Port in a Storm

This is also true historically to some effect. The bordeaux classification of 1855 (which remains in effect) was in large part done on price.

I heard a winemaker once explain it that _at one time in the past_ there was a larger difference between expensive and cheap wine, but in the years since then the large-scale mass-producers have gotten much better at making better quality wine in bulk and the difference today is much less than it was decades ago.

I think a similar story can be applied to many other luxury goods as well.

> in the years since then the large-scale mass-producers have gotten much better at making better quality wine in bulk and the difference today is much less than it was decades ago.

This has probably worked out well for consumers when it comes to wines, but for products more generally, I suspect this effect has also driven quality down to give us a very wide but mediocre average. As everything became designed to be made inexpensively and mass-produced at greater scale products at the lower end have become better, but mid-higher end products have gotten worse than in previous decades.

They could replace all the wine/whisky/audiophile/cigar/marijuana etc. aficionado writers with AI models and no one would notice.

Cheese/bread/chocolate/beer/coffee/…

What interests us is mostly pleasure that enters us through the mouth.

The wine... it's been deoxygenated. Once the glass is properly rimmed by a green sharpie, the tone it emits when stuck is exquisite. The aroma from the tincture of leaves swirls around the glass emitting a nutty flavor that perfectly compliments the 3rd harmonic.

Saying that a vintage is "great" is like saying a hamburger is "great". Sure, there are plenty of ways to screw up or cheap out, but everything above the "nice" level is 95%% personal taste.

> everything above the "nice" level is 95%% personal taste

Eh, sparkling (white) wines have a weirdly steep quality curve. (Lambruscos are more forgiving.) If you aren’t drinking a great bottle from a great vintage, you’re almost always better off drinking something dirt cheap. It’s flavourless. But that beats the off notes in the mid tier.

Anecdotally I 100% agree with this

Exactly. It's why people can't tell the difference between a expensive wines and cheap wines and it's price and expectations that drive their preference more than anything. It's so subjective that even expert tasters can't judge wines consistently. One analysis of wine competitions found that medals were basically distributed at random.

I don't worry about expensive or fancy wines, I just try a bunch of everything and drink what tastes good to me. The less I can spend on something that tastes great and gets me pleasantly buzzed the better. Snobbery is a fools game.

I used to hold the same opinion, until I studied and sat my WSET levels 2 and 3. Now I disagree.

There are concrete and objective quality indicators in wine, which independent observers will reach the same conclusion about (without communicating). Broadly speaking you can class those as complexity, intensity, balance and length.

It's entirely possible to have personal dislike for a particular wine style, yet score individual examples of it highly across those 4 areas. Equally it's possible to have great personal enjoyment of wines that don't score well.

Personal taste and quality are separate dimensions, and appreciation of the latter is a coachable skill. I recommend anyone in doubt to take a decent wine course and see for yourself.

Why should I need to be trained to tell when something is exceptionally good? I don't need training to know when a TV's picture looks great, or a bed is super comfy, or a knife keeps its edge forever.

Good for you! What does that have to do with personal taste though?

Those things you list all sound like objective measures. All I'm saying is that wine quality is an objective measure too.

There's a recent startup which wanted to take taste prediction of luxury drinks to the next level with ML:

https://www.mpg.de/18773206/the-signature-of-taste

Interesting article, I've got a few thoughts on this space.

Endless West (https://endlesswest.com/) has a "molecular whisky" (they aren't legally allowed to call it whisky because it wasn't distilled from a certain mash, aged in oak for a minimum number of years, etc. etc.) that's the same idea, minus the machine learning (which probably isn't that helpful, IMO [1]). More on the process in [2].

To my knowledge, it hasn't sold particularly well, and most reviews (granted, likely biased by the origin of the spirit) tend to say "it's fine, but it's not the same as 'real whisky'."

The issue with the "luxury spirits" market is that (to paraphrase the Scotch distillery Bruichladdich), "terrior matters". Like fine art, one's enjoyment of such a beverage comes from both the tangible (taste, smell, bottle presentation, etc.) and the intangible ("having good taste", "buying a bottle of whisky older than you are"; generally signaling value). Like most (all?) luxury goods, the tangible costs account for a small percentage of the overall cost, with the intangibles and associated signaling value.

There's a reason that "The Macallan" which is marketed as such costs significantly more than vs "the macallan" that's been private labeled by Costco or Trader Joe's. Same juice, different intangibles.

All of this is to say that:

- I think the technology is super cool and I want to see it come to fruition

- I don't think "luxury goods" is the right segment to target because nobody buys a birkin bag to carry their laptop to work

   - Create a novelty for mass affluent consumers; not super high margin but make up for it in volume (what Glyph was attempting)

   - Target a niche consumer group who cares about a different signaling metric, e.g. eco conscious consumers who want the same "end resuly" but are unhappy with traditional processes (which is what Endless West seems to be doing with e.g. [3])

[1]: Cognitive Cooking with Chef Watson (https://ice.edu/partner-with-ice/IBM) is a great cookbook because chefs fed IBM Watson a bunch of recipes and then asked it to create new recipes, which it did, with some _very_ wacky results that chefs then tweaked. Definitely possible to create new/unique/interesting things, but I think it's hard to get people to buy into the end result, especially if the majority of folks would initially reject it as disgusting/too weird.

[2]: https://fortune.com/2019/05/25/endless-west-glyph-engineered...

[3]: https://shop.endlesswest.com/kazoku.html

Shouldn't this be pretty easily testable with a blind taste test?

Suppose you make a whisky that is indistinguishable from "The Macallan" in blind taste tests. Who cares? Who's going to buy it?

Me, if it's cheaper!

Same. I keep a bottle of Blue Label that I refill with Green/Gold/Platinum (depending on how generous I'm feeling) that gets served to guests who visit my home bar and ask for Blue Label because they know nothing about scotch except that it's expensive. I actually think those colors are better than Blue, but that's neither here nor there...

My personal trend over the past few years has been to buy from independent bottlers, of which Costco/TJ usually carry (e.g. Alexander Murray). I've also switched to other beverages: armagnac, mezcal, rum; all of which have lower brand recognition and interest here. Overall it means I can get more variety (and value) at a better price, which is a win.

You can't sell to people buying Macallan 12, you have to sell to people who _don't_ currently buy Macallan 12 because $REASONS (significant price difference, ESG angles like lower carbon footprint, they can't get it in their location, etc.).

Short answer is likely "yes" though I think there's a surprising amount of variation even there.

Longer answer is that I'm not sure the direct comparison ever really happens because in a spirits tasting competition where there would be double blind testings, it's never pitted against the whiskies it's being "marketed against" (e.g. a "real" bourbon or scotch). Sip 2021 puts it in "other whiskies" in which it gets the lowest awarded medal: https://sipawards.com/content/results/sipawards2021results.p... (though interestingly in 2022, Spice, their "scotch" blend, won double gold in the same category: https://sipawards.com/content/results/sipawards2022results.p...).

Obviously you could host your own with a few friends and give it a go (e.g. https://www.keacher.com/1334/scotch/)

Most big name champagne is priced to cover the marketing and sponsorship, small estate champagne can sometimes be better value for money as they have smaller overheads. At the same time the big names can produce more at scale or rely on deeper stocks for blending before bottling. Rather than arguing that no one can taste the difference go to a wine show or even a specialist tasting where you can try many different types then decide what is worth buying a case of.

As a Ganjier, I can’t wait for this level of data analysis of terroir variables to make it to the cannabis industry.

Should probably have just used Catboost

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