Wine tasting is bullshit
io9.com
io9.com
It's definitely all very personal, subjective and prone to loads of outside influences. Are the limitations of language partially at fault? Probably. Are wine reviewers pompous? Mostly. But is there really an incredible variety of flavors and textures in red wine alone? Yes there is. And don't get me started on cognac and whiskey.
[1]: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405274870368380457453...
camperman's point that "there really an incredible variety of flavors and textures in red wine alone" probably isn't very controversial to anyone that's actually tasted more than a few bottles.
It just struck me as odd to ask for a citation when the article that's referenced uses one for that point. Possibly you meant to force them to look deeper into the citation to support their position. If so, as a third party, it's confusing. Considering it now, I may be guilty of having done that in the past, regretfully.
I am a coffee enthusiast. I've tasted a lot of coffees. Even with coffee tasting notes, I am quite convinced that the majority of tasters are simply making things up.
Anecdote time.
I had the opportunity to go to a coffee cupping with a well respected barista around here. You have 3 cups, 2 are identical. Your job is to try and find the odd one out. We had a little seminar on taste, and did a few taste recognising exercises before doing the cupping. There was a chef in attendance who did not do very well during the exercises or during the cupping (I did pretty well).
Pinning down a flavour is very hard without purposeful practise. Most people don't build flavour associations. I've been paying more attention to flavours since the cupping. I don't always remember flavours by what food they are in. For example, my recollection of the taste of cocoa powder is linked to the feeling of it going up my nose that time I opened the pack wrong. My recollection of apricot is linked to the time I couldn't quite recall the flavour, got mad, and went down to the supermarket and bought an apricot to eat.
Things do taste different and price is definitely a factor. But I think tasting notes are mostly garbage.
The $5 wildcard came out top. I also had a "slop bucket", into which all the dregs from the bottles went. The slop bucket was served up and came middle, of the pack, next to the $30 bottle. The bottom wine was a truly dreadful, dirt cheap cask wine that someone had brought and decanted into a bottle for a joke.
At the end of the night, the scores and identities were revealed. Interestingly, some people began to revise their opinions, saying how the expensive wine was good, but they "weren't quite sure", so down rated it.
The other party trick that night was trying to distinguish between red and white wine whilst blindfolded and holding one's nose. Apart from one person, the results were more or less random.
This led to my 4th grade science fair project which was blind taste testing of Jelly Bellies (Coffee, Strawberry, Licorice, and Buttery Popcorn). I can't remember the results perfectly, but in general, people were pretty worthless at telling them apart without their nose.
Not surprising, given that the sense of smell is a significant part of our experience of taste.
This actually seems perfectly valid to me. One of the universal qualities of "expensive-tasting" things is that their tastes are usually complex--it takes a while to work through exactly what makes them good. They're meant to also be good in the "food" sense, yes, but more than anything, they're supposed to be art--of the kind you would stand in a gallery analyzing, trying to figure out how the time and place of its creation influenced its style, etc.
With no training, you'll usually ignore flavor entirely, and just go for the wine that has the most sugar and a decent amount of alcohol. It might not actually be the one you most prefer in the moment (though it certainly could be)--but when you're asked for a rating, it's the one you can justify, and our post-hoc justifications for preferences frequently overwrite our (weaker) memories of experiential preferences.
Hope everyone who liked it stocked up. But is this a data point against "wine tasting" (supporting that wine tasting is bullshit) or just saying that price isn't necessarily an indicator of preference? I like some cheap and cheerful restaurants more than celebrity chef restaurants in big brand hotel lobbies.
"I also had a "slop bucket", into which all the dregs from the bottles went. The slop bucket was served up and came middle, of the pack, next to the $30 bottle."
You don't mention what sort of people were at the party, but perhaps they just like an even blend?
"Interestingly, some people began to revise their opinions, saying how the expensive wine was good, but they "weren't quite sure", so down rated it."
I think a lot of that comes down to human nature and you would find equivalent comments and tests with all sorts of product categories including other beverages, quality of fabric/fashion, speaker systems, etc.
That said do I think you can score a wine though? No. You can certainly pick between a selection of wines and rank them in order of what you prefer. You can certainly have a preference for style/type food combo icewine and botrytis for dessert or Riesling with seafood. This is the benefit in wine tasting in my opinion. Not impressing your friends with a 98 score wine but matching food appropriately.
Have you done the sort of blindfold/label-free bottle tests described? If not, you're potentially falling for exactly the sort of thing the article is about.
If you have to teach people to distinguish good and bad isn't that an admission that the whole thing is bullshit?
Chef: You stupid amateurs could never appreciate my noodles!
Tampopo: But people who eat noodles are all amateurs. So why make noodles amateurs can't appreciate?
While I happen to agree that people should just "buy what they like," the path to forming an opinion is usually a guided one.
However, I have not immersed myself in the game enough to be able to understand what is a good play and what is a great play. I don't understand the lingo, I don't understand the strategy and I don't understand the tactics.
Am I in a position to judge then whether one player (or game) is better than another? I don't believe I am.
Substitute with chess if you like. A chess aficionado may find a lot of pleasurable excitement in a move that an amateur may see as pointless.
There are also concepts you've heard of such as a "musician's musician" or a "comedian's comedian" - wherein deep knowledge of the craft gives a different appreciation of the experience.
And to be fair to wine reviewers, it seemed like the score was a 3-4 point variable. That's a lot if you're in competition but in general if you only think in terms of 90s, 80s, 70s and such, you'll generally get a higher quality wine. I think the lack of value comes in when you're trying to judge between say, a 90 and a 95. That's when it becomes arbitrary and subjective.
Some of the review mags now no longer give straight scores but give instead range scores because it's true that every batch can be slightly different. I've started to see wine mags rate a wine say, 92-95 instead of 93.3434234. Seems far more reasonable to give it multiple goes to deal with variable conditions.
I don't drink wine for the label or points it earned. In fact, my favorite wine comes from a region known for sacrilegious levels of fruitiness (Paso Robles) and I really enjoy being able to taste/smell the barrel toasting (a no-no in refined wines).
Bottom line, I enjoy every second of this experience, whether it's real or in my head, I really don't care... And neither should you! :)
Most people, given exposure over years, will prefer more better wines. You can accelerate that process by tastings: 5-6 small glasses so you can properly compare wines, repeated over a few weeks. This works even if people don't know the prices, and without guidance from experts.
I hate to say this, because it always sounds like you're being an asshole, but I think it's warranted in some instances, in it's sincere form; Did you read the article before posting?
This was addressing the section towards the end, "The Exception": "among amateur wine drinkers [...], the survey found [...] a negative correlation between price and happiness".
Check the residual sugars in Menage a Trois, Apothic Red and similar wines. They get that by adding concentrated grape juice, then enough chemicals to stop those sugars from undergoing more fermentation. Lots of amateur wine drinkers love that style.
If saying this makes me an asshole, so be it.
Fair enough, I didn't make that connection. For me the main take-away form the article was that even critics have problems with repeatability and identifying what I believed to be core identifying features.
If saying this makes me an asshole, so be it.
I meant "you" in the general sense, implying I would sound like an asshole for saying it.
The former is useful--read a review, see a bunch of adjectives you prefer in your wines attached to something, go out and buy it where you otherwise wouldn't have, enjoy yourself. The latter, though, is agreed by even the majority of the wine journalism industry to be a disgrace, driving prices both up and down by creating an artificial power-law ranking for wines, where the (good!) wines in the middle are ignored in favor of everyone competing over $3500 bottles that happen to get 99 arbitrary "points."
Is it? The article points to studies that correlate verbiage price. Additionally, it makes a case that reviewers generally can't identify more than six or so flavors in a wine. Combined with evidence that they often can't even tell red from white, what chance is there the review will be accurate about specifics within a category when they can't even be trusted to get the category right?
There are certain terms that do just mean "it tastes expensive," yes (and reviewers that are paid by the word frequently whip out the wine-taster's thesaurus to spew them all over the page to fill their quota.) But the kinds of details I'm talking about aren't those--looking for, say, a "hint of nutmeg" in a wine won't put you into a higher echelon of prices. It'll just give you wines that taste more like nutmeg.
> it makes a case that reviewers generally can't identify more than six or so flavors in a wine
I don't see what's wrong with that. Six is already a lot of details to pick out. By that point, you're getting down past the standards of the label and into things like "orange zest", which really do let you discriminate a wine with a flavor you might want to try from one that turns you off.
> they often can't even tell red from white
This isn't as shocking a pronouncement as it's made out to be. Here's the quote:
> They called it "jammy," for example, and noted the flavors imparted by its "crushed red fruit."
This implies that they clearly could tell it wasn't your average red--those are the kinds of things you would say about a red (usually as a veiled insult) when it doesn't have any tannin or oak in it, which tends to imply that it's basically a white made with red grapes (that is, made with white-wine processes, that don't seek to capture tannins.)
Whites and reds, although they seem like (and are treated like) separate things, are really just a spectrum; there's no dividing point where a white becomes a red, flavor-wise; there are whites that taste like reds, and reds that taste like whites. The category is just about the color, nothing else.
Considering how most other defenders have reverted to simple knee-jerk "it's obviously not bullshit, I go tasting all the time" reactions, possibly without even reading the linked article, I salute (and update) you.
Edit: refined text to clarify meaning. s/not exactly winning/not entirely winning/
Relevant article from him: http://www.timswineblog.com/2011/01/robert-parker-is-not-the...
Wine tasting isn't just reviewers and their rankings. It's fun, it's poetic, it's analytical, it's exploration and so on. Ultimately, you will like what you like and no serious person in wine will tell you otherwise. Thinking more about what you're tasting or how what you're using works, or why an advertisement said something the way it said, and countless other examples are a joy in life: understanding our world.
If you can buy your wine through cellar door tastings, you are more able to pick things you like (adjusted for price) rather than be reliant on brands, labels, price and the opinions of others. What you taste and how many descriptors you feel you can assign is up to you and of course it will vary from one person to another. I can't remember having ever bought something based on the medals printed on the label; I have once or twice heard of a surprise winner (e.g., $15 bottle taking out a competition) and wanted to try it for myself. I think that's on par with hearing "critics are raving" and checking out a film.
The courses I have done don't teach good vs bad but teach you to identify what are considered to be faults - corked, brettanomyces, etc - but also note that in some cases these are regarded as complexities by some. e.g, if you like something, you like it. And ultimately help you identify regional differences, varieties and so on.
Some people are happy to drive their car. Others like knowing how it works and tinkering. Doesn't mean car knowledge is bullshit.
I really enjoy blind tastings and trying to guess years, regions and varieties. My wife's family are very involved in wine (vineyard owner, winemaker, wine sales, etc) and take blind tastings to ever more flowery levels. There's a lot of name-dropping of regions and exotic varieties but it's all in good fun as entertainment, and an excuse to try more.
* The sense of taste is very influenced by experience. If something makes you sick (bad chicken), you can develop a lasting aversion to that taste. Conversely, if something makes you feel good over and over again (alcohol), over time you will start to like it, even if, that thing doesn't taste very good initially.
* The fact that the taste of wine, beer, booze ... is not simply a "good" taste like sugar or protein, makes it more "complex" and interesting. Candy = yum, but as you get older, it's kind of gross. Alcohol, on the other hand, stays interesting. This theory is not very scientific, but I think it has a grain of truth.
* Wine in the USA carries a heavy burden ... of Americans' feelings of cultural inferiority (in general, but originally towards Europe). "Wine tasting" even more so seems like an effete, silly, snobby thing to do. It's in the same neighborhood as the USA's love-hate relationship with France. It got put into our cultural code at our founding, and we still have it. "They think they're so cool and sophisticated. What a load of bull! And yet, it seems like there's something there that we don't understand." Argh, we can't seem to get over it.
* Anyways, my advice: just have fun and don't take the experts seriously, certainly don't feel inadequate. It is bullshit, it is an art -- in some domains, who can tell the difference?
If there's one thing that "wine tasting" can help you to do, it's just to PAY ATTENTION to what you are tasting, and talk about it. We shove so much crap into our face that we don't even really taste, and it's sad because "tasting" can be a source of great pleasure.
Also, it can be fun to think of Wine Country as an especially epic bar crawl that you go on when you're old and starting in the morning. This is when drinking gets serious.
For posterity sake, I'll drop a hint[1].
Given the repeated success of things like $2 buck Chuck, it seems that typical people would do well with $4-14 bottles of table red or table white for most applications. There's a lot of options in these price ranges.
My wife has obvious preferences for wine selection based on meals. So I have to assume there's taste differences involved.
In fact, I'm struggling to think of a collection of things that people enjoy that can be objectively measured (with the arguable exception of sports teams and the like, but that's only if you're judging them by their ability to win games, not things like who gives the best game for spectators).
Targeting wine makes me think this is more of a "ha look at those elitist jerks sipping on their wine we are the 99%" whine than anything else.
I've never done a blind red/white test. That sounds like an interesting project for the weekend. I should put a bottle of red in the fridge.
Beer, on the other hand, is something that is both more consistent and more varied. And usually cheaper.
Worrying argumentation. The studies themselves could be interesting though.
There are countless products that earn higher margins (and loyalty) because customers like the story, the design or some other aspect of the product or service that doesn't really help the customer. But these things matter.
At the end of the day, we're not perfectly rational robots. We're people.