Are wine connoisseurs all fakers?

[Yllaria]

I don’t know about wine connoisseurs, but I’ve known a few Food Science majors. Food Science people do tests. Some tastings are done in rooms with red light bulbs so that it’s difficult to respond to the color of a food or wine. Some tests are done with the same wine or vodka in different bottles to measure the influence of the bottle on the subjective experience of taste. There is BTW, a lot of influence.

Ann C. Noble developed the Davis Wine Aroma Wheel. If you are sceptical of descriptions such as “hints of pear and chocolate, with citrus overtones”, you have to understand that before the wheel, wine descriptions were much more fanciful. Ann wanted quantifiable and replicable ways to describe a wine. If you couldn’t train a panel of volunteers to reliably identify wines that did or didn’t include the taste/aroma, it wasn’t included.

In the years since the wheel was developed, many of the chemical micro-constituents that produce the various aromas have been identified. The chemicals that produce the bell pepper and garlic aromas are nasty stinky at full concentration. In the lab, they’re triple contained and kept in a refrigerator. At UC Davis, the lab was only allowed to open and use them on weekends. If they did it during the week, nearby buildings would call in gas leaks.

So there is a basis for the descriptions. That doesn’t mean that there can’t be inaccuracies in any particular description, only that there is a basis. People who know, know to check for the typical micro-tastes.

[wonky]

@FairyChatMom

When I hear someone talking about “hints of pear and chocolate, with citrus overtones” or whatever they say about certain wines, I’m inclined to think they’re making things up. Maybe not, but it still comes across as hokey to me.

If you do wine tasting, you definitely start to notice flavors that aren’t just “this is a grape.”

My funniest moment was when we had a white wine and, no joke, I thought there were hints of chicken bouillon. Yes, it tasted like chicken.

[Athena]

@gaffa

My favorite bit was the section on wine. The take-away was that you can make a bottle of “two buck chuck” get the ratings of some of the most expensive wines by using a blender and a laboratory grade filter for “hyper-aeration”.

That’s not quite what it says. The blender thing simply super-aerates the wine, which, for some wines, acts a little bit like aging. Modernist Cuisine claims it makes a huge difference; I’ve done it with a bottle or two - taking half the bottle and blending it and leaving the other half un-blended - and I can’t tell the difference.

As far as being able to really discern wine, it’s really not that difficult to figure out different wines by varietal and/or type. A chardonnay versus a riesling or a Cabernet Sauvignon versus a Gamay is just a matter of drinking enough of them to be able to recognize the difference.

Crap versus quality, kind of the same thing. You start to recognize subtle hints that tell you this is a crafted wine as opposed to some swill made for quick sale.

Above that, being able to tell the difference between, say, a 2005 Cab from such-and-such vineyard versus the 2010 from the same, that’s a LOT harder. I believe there are people who can do it, because I’ve met them (I worked for a Master Sommelier for a while). I can’t do it, and your average person who is into wine but not a professional probably can’t do it, either. I think that’s where all the bad press comes from; either non-wine-drinkers who really are clueless, or the guys who can discern between a merlot and a pinot noir thinking that they are a lot better than they really are.

Most people can’t do ALL wines, either. Me, for example. I’m good with Alsacian wines and wines made from Alsacian varietals (Riesling, Gewurz, Pinot Blanc, etc). I can pick out a wine that displays the minerality and style of an Alsacian. I can probably figure out wines made from Riesling versus Gewurz, but I doubt I could do Pinot Blanc versus Pinot Gris. And get me into other grapes - say, reds from California, and beyond very broad strokes I’d be lost.

As far as the fancy words - “dark cherries”, “leather”, “guava”, etc. I think people also misunderstand how those are used. When I say I taste “leather” in a wine, I don’t actually mean it tastes like chewing on leather. Basically when you taste multiple wines, there are subtle differences and similarities between them. You might say “oh, I taste this one minor characteristic in Wine X, and it’s also in Wine Z, but I don’t taste it at all in Wine Y.”

It’s a LOT easier to describe that taste to other people if you put a name to it. So you come up with something that evokes that subtle taste - maybe it’s leather, or “herbal”, or “citrusy” or whatever. It’s not supposed to mean that the average person would take a drink of the wine and immediately go “Hey! it tastes like oranges!” It’s just a convenient way to refer to subtle flavors that show up in wines.

[HMS_Irruncible]

I think most people are readily capable of detecting aromas like vanilla, pear, and coffee in wine. Acidity, astringency, and sweetness likewise are fairly straightforward. So with just an hour or so of tasting, most people could accurately describe the taste of a wine in language that might sound sophisticated.

When it gets to things like the terroir and microclimate… I believe these things can be experienced and enjoyed, but not repeatably described. Furthermore, so much of it is personal preference. One person may have pleasant associations with a whiff of leather and allow this to open up more areas of perceptions, where it might turn someone else off completely.

There are indeed supertasters who experience taste and aroma much more strongly and richly than the rest of us. You would think these people would be the foremost wine critics, but it turns out that supertasting can be too much of a good thing. However, scientificially speaking, I think supertasters could help us sort out the bunk when it comes to odd qualitative terms like soap, grass, shoe leather, beeswax, or what have you.

So the bottom line is… find what you like. Learn the language that helps you reliably find what you like. If you find that paying $50 extra makes the difference, by all means do that. But I’d highly suggest learning to love more affordable wines and putting that extra money into high-end cheese

[AZRob]

@Athena

That’s not quite what it says. The blender thing simply super-aerates the wine, which, for some wines, acts a little bit like aging. Modernist Cuisine claims it makes a huge difference; I’ve done it with a bottle or two - taking half the bottle and blending it and leaving the other half un-blended - and I can’t tell the difference.

As far as being able to really discern wine, it’s really not that difficult to figure out different wines by varietal and/or type. A chardonnay versus a riesling or a Cabernet Sauvignon versus a Gamay is just a matter of drinking enough of them to be able to recognize the difference.

Crap versus quality, kind of the same thing. You start to recognize subtle hints that tell you this is a crafted wine as opposed to some swill made for quick sale.

Above that, being able to tell the difference between, say, a 2005 Cab from such-and-such vineyard versus the 2010 from the same, that’s a LOT harder. I believe there are people who can do it, because I’ve met them (I worked for a Master Sommelier for a while). I can’t do it, and your average person who is into wine but not a professional probably can’t do it, either. I think that’s where all the bad press comes from; either non-wine-drinkers who really are clueless, or the guys who can discern between a merlot and a pinot noir thinking that they are a lot better than they really are.

Most people can’t do ALL wines, either. Me, for example. I’m good with Alsacian wines and wines made from Alsacian varietals (Riesling, Gewurz, Pinot Blanc, etc). I can pick out a wine that displays the minerality and style of an Alsacian. I can probably figure out wines made from Riesling versus Gewurz, but I doubt I could do Pinot Blanc versus Pinot Gris. And get me into other grapes - say, reds from California, and beyond very broad strokes I’d be lost.

As far as the fancy words - “dark cherries”, “leather”, “guava”, etc. I think people also misunderstand how those are used. When I say I taste “leather” in a wine, I don’t actually mean it tastes like chewing on leather. Basically when you taste multiple wines, there are subtle differences and similarities between them. You might say “oh, I taste this one minor characteristic in Wine X, and it’s also in Wine Z, but I don’t taste it at all in Wine Y.”

It’s a LOT easier to describe that taste to other people if you put a name to it. So you come up with something that evokes that subtle taste - maybe it’s leather, or “herbal”, or “citrusy” or whatever. It’s not supposed to mean that the average person would take a drink of the wine and immediately go “Hey! it tastes like oranges!” It’s just a convenient way to refer to subtle flavors that show up in wines.

Athena, that was very helpful! You articulated what I was trying to think of as an amateur Bourbon/Rye/Scotch drinker but wouldn’t have been able to get across nearly so well

[Lebowski446]

@Left_Hand_of_Dorkness

This might be GQ, but I think it goes here.

Anyway, we’ve probably all read or seen the experiments (more like practical jokes) where connoisseurs are tricked into using red-wine adjectives to describe white wine that’s been dyed red, or into praising a cheap wine that’s been poured into a schmancy bottle. It’s pretty impressive to see these things happen.

In general when I’ve read/watched such practical jokes, the author’s conclusion is that there’s no difference between fancy and cheap wine, and that connoisseurs are full of shit. But it seems to me that there’s another possible conclusion: maybe, just maybe, the power of suggestion is powerful. Maybe this has less to do with food science than it has to do with stage magic.

So my question is this: have there been experiments done in which the power of suggestion is removed, in which wine connoisseurs know they’re being tested, and the test is double-blind from unmarked glasses? Almost certainly these experiments have been done. What are the results?

First post. I used to work in a wine shop at college and was sent on a couple of wine courses and honestly - the only real distinction that I found was between rock bottom priced wines and “average price” wines (in UK £6-£7) basically every wine has a fixed cost (bottling, export etc) after which you’re paying for the actual liquid in the bottle. Wines priced at around £6-7 sterling you’re paying double toward the alcohol of a £4-£5 wine. The difference in character and taste is noticeable. Beyond that (I tried up
To £20-£40) couldn’t really tell that much difference - the main difference is in the grape variety between wines. Also everyone’s pallett interprets wines differently - whilst I was always pushed to sell
expensive wine even to this day I pick a variety I like (Shiraz/Cabernet) and head for that price point.

[beowulff]

My wife has a girlfriend with a very wealthy boyfriend, and at her (the girlfriend’s) birthday party, the rich boyfriend brought a bottle of Rothschild that I later Goolged and found cost on the order of $750. So, we all got to partake of this absurdly expensive wine, and you know what?
It was good.
But, that’s it - it wasn’t (IMHO) $750 worth of “good.” So, my take-away was that Wine, like so many things, has a very steep performance / price curve - a $75/bottle wine is likely to be 99.99% as good as a $1000/bottle one.

Maybe I just don’t have a very sophisticated palate. If so, that’s OK with me - I’ll stick with a nice, tannin-y Chianti.
As an aside - a very good friend of mine gave us a bottle of Dom Perignon 1998 for our wedding. It came in a wooden box, with a note describing the vintage. We drank it with some friends for New Years a few years later, and… It was GREAT.
The difference between the cheap crap Champagne that I normally get and this one was like night and day. I had always thought that Champagne was supposed to taste like the crap you make Mimosas with, but this was something completely different - smooth, complex, and flavorful.
That really changed my thinking about Champagnes.

[Chefguy]

I don’t buy into the “hints of currant and raspberry, with an underlying soupcon of cinnamon” nonsense. I can’t differentiate like that and I suspect that most others can’t either. I tend to divide wines into sweet, dry, earthy, fruity and bland. I prefer the more solid wines like cab or zin or a good Douro, and usually avoid pinots and whites.

[wonky]

@Chefguy

I don’t buy into the “hints of currant and raspberry, with an underlying soupcon of cinnamon” nonsense. I can’t differentiate like that and I suspect that most others can’t either. I tend to divide wines into sweet, dry, earthy, fruity and bland. I prefer the more solid wines like cab or zin or a good Douro, and usually avoid pinots and whites.

If you drink three different wines, one right after another, they will taste different. If you try to describe the differences, you’ll need language to do that.

[D_Odds]

@Chefguy

I don’t buy into the “hints of currant and raspberry, with an underlying soupcon of cinnamon” nonsense. I can’t differentiate like that and I suspect that most others can’t either. I tend to divide wines into sweet, dry, earthy, fruity and bland. I prefer the more solid wines like cab or zin or a good Douro, and usually avoid pinots and whites.

I’ve gone on wine tasting tours, and when I was trying the same varietal from several vineyards, I could start to note the differences beyond “sweet, dry, earthy, fruity and bland”. I would notice that a fruity wine might be more citrusy, or more melon-like, or more apple/pear-like. These things I wouldn’t notice, in general, if I was only having one bottle.

ETA: I need to learn to compose my thoughts faster, jsgoddess said the same thing I did only faster.

[Chefguy]

@jsgoddess

If you drink three different wines, one right after another, they will taste different. If you try to describe the differences, you’ll need language to do that.

Right, but it depends on who’s talking and the audience one is addressing. I don’t recall the last time I needed a descriptive other than the ones I mentioned.

[Jack_of_Words]

I drink wine more than I drink any other alcohol, and though I’m no expert I can certainly distinguish layers of flavour in wines. But my (admittedly limited) experience with the more expensive wines leads me to agree with Lebowski446 - one can easily tell the difference between ‘cheap and nasty’ and ‘good wine’, but ‘great wine’ appears to be a matter of fashion and favour rather than flavour. As for the snobbery of wine tasting, I think Robert Glenister sums it up nicely in this ad for gin:
you tube

[wonky]

@Chefguy

Right, but it depends on who’s talking and the audience one is addressing. I don’t recall the last time I needed a descriptive other than the ones I mentioned.

Again, with the caveat that I am wine-ignorant, if you’re distinguishing between three Merlots, or five or twenty, aren’t the differences more subtle than “this wine is earthy”? I mean, the varietals would have their own characteristics that would set them apart from another varietal, right? And then within each varietal, wouldn’t you want terms that start to separate one vineyard from another? I guess for me, if all wines tasted the same, or all wines tasted the same within each varietal, you’d just have one big vat of “Merlot wine.” But even in my fledgling wine tasting, I could taste the differences between various wines of the same varietal. One might be cinnamon-y, one apple-y.

ETA: I also meant to say that you said it was “nonsense” and that people can’t distinguish. That’s a lot stronger than saying “I generally don’t need to use super exact language,” isn’t it?

[Chefguy]

@jsgoddess

Again, with the caveat that I am wine-ignorant, if you’re distinguishing between three Merlots, or five or twenty, aren’t the differences more subtle than “this wine is earthy”? I mean, the varietals would have their own characteristics that would set them apart from another varietal, right? And then within each varietal, wouldn’t you want terms that start to separate one vineyard from another? I guess for me, if all wines tasted the same, or all wines tasted the same within each varietal, you’d just have one big vat of “Merlot wine.” But even in my fledgling wine tasting, I could taste the differences between various wines of the same varietal. One might be cinnamon-y, one apple-y.

ETA: I also meant to say that you said it was “nonsense” and that people can’t distinguish. That’s a lot stronger than saying “I generally don’t need to use super exact language,” isn’t it?

Conceded, and my apologies for the use of hyperbole, which I seem to use a lot more than before internet message boards existed. It’s, like, totally the absolute worst thing in the universe.

[wonky]

@Chefguy

Conceded, and my apologies for the use of hyperbole, which I seem to use a lot more than before internet message boards existed. It’s, like, totally the absolute worst thing in the universe.

Ha!

[Archeonomist]

I remember John Cleese did a program about wine a couple of years ago.

In it he had a number of guests gathered at a party. Each guest got a small metal bottle containing some wine. They couldn’t see what was in it. I think they were told it was an experiment, and that they would be asked about the wine. At the end they were simply asked to tell whether they had tasted a white wine or a red wine.

The results were all over the place. That seems to imply that when served at the same temperature, without visual clues, the average person struggles to even taste the difference between white and red wine. Not exactly the most scientific of tests, but interesting.

ETA: This is the one Wine for the Confused (TV Movie 2004) - IMDb

[John_Mace]

@Channing_Idaho_Banks

For me, wine is wine. If it’s palatable, I’ll drink it. I think I can taste the difference between good wine and bad wine.

At restaurants, when choosing wine, I tend to just pick the least expensive one. Why would they offer bad wine on the wine list?

For people who don’t know any better.

@FairyChatMom

A couple of years back, my mother had a bottle of champagne that was supposedly really expensive and really fine, and she broke it out for a family dinner. Frankly, I thought it tasted like bubbly vinegar.

When I hear someone talking about “hints of pear and chocolate, with citrus overtones” or whatever they say about certain wines, I’m inclined to think they’re making things up. Maybe not, but it still comes across as hokey to me.

But what do I know - on the rare occasions I have wine, I drink it over ice.

That may be why you can’t taste the different flavors. Ice-cold wine tastes quite different from wine served at the proper temperature. And if you’ve never tasted citrus flavors in wine, then you probably haven’t tasted any Sauv Blanc from NZ-- that is one of the defining characteristics of that wine.

If you don’t like wine, that’s fine. But it’s funny to hear people who know nothing about it claim that other people can’t taste difference they don’t taste.

If you think wine is wine, try eating oysters with a nice Spanish Albarino and then try eating them with a bold, Cab from Napa. The bold Cab from Napa is going to be a great wine, but it will taste like shit with oysters.

I don’t claim to be a wine expert, but pour me a glass each of Pinot, Cab and Zin and I’ll tell which is which. Same with Chard and Sauv Blanc. They simply don’t taste like each other.