Howdy, I consider myself a “skeptic” in that I respect the scientific method and don’t believe in anything that can’t be shown (repeated) under test conditions. As such, I also don’t like to think I’m being bamboozled by anything and I feel like I have a healthy “question everything” attitude.
My (conflicted) thoughts on wine:
[ul]
[li]I seem to remember that there have been blinded studies debunking expensive vs. cheap wine, or at least the whole adjective thing that goes along with wine (this one has notes of cherry, this one has almond overtones, etc.)[/li][li]Social “brown bag” wine parties (essentially blind tasting) tend to yield results contrary to price or rating. [/li][li]There are likely real, chemical differences between different wines. [/li][li]No one would dispute that one could easily tell the difference between major classes of wine (grape varietal, age, etc.). To what extent to more subtle, perhaps environmental differences affect the taste of wine? (e.g. This hillside is covered in shade for 47% of the day as opposed to that one). [/li][li]The sense of taste is surely linked closely with psychology and mental processes. Perhaps blinded studies in this case don’t reveal the full truth. If I know that this is a $200 bottle of wine, and it’s long flowery description, ahead of time, isn’t it reasonable that it might actually TASTE better to me? Not quite the placebo effect, but close. [/li][li]My friend is a 3rd level (or however they do it) Sommalier. Apparently the certification program and testing is extremely harsh. My impression is that these people know their shit. [/li][/ul]
What are fellow dopers’ thoughts on the reality of the wine world?
My reality is “If it (the wine) augments a good cut of meat, it’s worth it’s weight in copper (I was tempted to use “gold”, but thought better of it), regardless of price”. I try not to get caught up in the verbal or written hype. Although I have not had a $200 bottle of wine, I’ve had my share of excellent $8 bottles and some pretty crappy $20 bottles, although I really haven’t documented the ratio of each class. But maybe the good:bad ratio of the $8 bottles is actually inferior to the ratio of the $20 bottles. Can’t say for certain though.
What is a definition of a good wine? Certainly different growing conditions will produce different tastes, but how is that correlated to what any particular person thinks is a good taste?
You are absolutely correct that “knowing” a wine is good ahead of time will make it taste good. Remember the study showing that expensive sugar pills worked better than cheap sugar pills?
I’m sure that wine experts know their stuff, in the sense that they know the terminology, the regions, the bottlers, the vineyards, and what good wine is supposed to taste like. But does that mean that the wine that is supposed to be good will be better for you than Two Buck Chuck? I suspect that there is an intimidation aspect also. If you are out with a wine expert friend, who says a wine is great, who are you to argue?
I think for many of us our taste buds are in our wallets.
There is an intimidation factor (and a snob factor), but some experts try to eliminate it.
A few years ago, a friend took a wine appreciation class. He told me that on the first day, the instructor poured each person two glasses of chilled white wine, labeled “A” and “B”. No labels were visible.
The students unanimously agreed that the wine in glass “A” was better than the wine in glass “B”. The instructor then revealed the labels. Wine “A” was Blue Nun, a mass-produced inexpensive white wine. Wine “B” was something much more expensive that had been featured in Wine Spectator. The lesson was that the students should trust their own taste. Price is not necessarily an indicator of taste.
Although I enjoy wine, I’m not much of a wine connoisseur. While this may sound elitist, I believe there is an element of truth to it. I think the reason why a mass-produced inexpensive wine is found to be “better” in a blind taste-test of just regular people is because in general the typical palate is unrefined and usually responds to sweet and/or somewhat non-complex in flavor notes.
If you look at historical American tastes in coffee (Folger’s, Maxwell House; cheaply produced robusta blends) and beer (rice based pale ales), you could probably correlate it wine.
I teach at a culinary college, and my classroom is next door to the Wines class and I just ran this past the instructor there. A few things from this conversation, as well as many others over the years.
No, most wine drinkers cannot tell the difference between, say a South American Chardonnay vs. a French one.
Yes, a trained Somellier – or just a serious wine lover – can. I’ve watched them do it.
There is a big difference between bad wine and good wine, and most people can taste it. Fortunately, the vast majority of wine for sale is good wine, including the $6 bottles at the 7-11. Truly bad wine is often a result of errors in manufacture or storage, and modern winemaking has made these rare.
There is a real, but much smaller, difference between good wine and great wine, and few people can tell the difference. If you have to ask, you aren’t one of them.
Because of the above, yes, there is an enormous amount of BS in the wine biz, from people putting on airs. Anybody who denies this is lying, either to you or to themselves. The consensus is you generally shouldn’t spend more than $20 or so unless you aspire to be one of those really serious wine people.
Perhaps the most useful thing is this:
The difference between the $5 bottle and the $500 bottle is not a good vs. bad thing, but more like simple vs. complex, or common vs. rare. They command those prices becauase they are interesting or unique to the relatively few people who can know the difference.
To make analogies:
A 1932 Dodge isn’t “better” than a 2009 Dodge because it costs more; it’s just much rarer. If you aren’t a vintage-car buff (and have neither the time or money to invest in maintaining one), there’s no reason why you shouldn’t take the newer, cheaper car if you like it more.
James Joyce isn’t “better” than Steven King; he’s just more complex. English teachers will point out his grounbreaking technique, his influence on subsequent authors and his complicated metaphortical system; but if you don’t like him, it doesn’t mean you’re a rube because you prefer King.
Have you ever been to a wine tasting? I’m not expert or anything, but some wines I like the taste of and others I don’t.
It can get very flowery and pretenteous though. I wish I could find it but there was this hillareous bit on Conan O’Brien a few days ago where this wine expert is going on and on and Conan is like “I am going to kill you”.
I know very little about wine except that I like to drink it, but hey, this is Great Debates.
In my experience, you can enjoy a pretty decent wine for 4 euros a bottle, but I’ve tasted a few really amazing wines and they were all a bit to a lot more expensive than that. I’m not very surprised by that, since good taste is noticable and allows the seller to charge more.
On the other hand, I don’t think that the 60 euro/bottle white wine I really, really enjoyed a couple of months ago was significantly better than the really deep, subtle 10 euro/bottle red I had a few months before that.
I think quite a bit of it is snobbery, but then again, if you’re a producer of really good wine and you can only produce X number of bottles a year, you’re going to charge for it. If it’s truely excellent, people will pay crazy money, but most of the times it’ll just be “pretty damn good”. AFAICT price is only a fairly rough indicator of taste.
A few years ago there was an article in Scientific American titled “Secrets of the Expert Mind”, which began by noting that in many fields experiments have proven that the experts are no better than yokels. Wine tasting is one of those fields. Recognized, credentialed experts cannot distinguish between cheap and expensive wines by taste any better than you or I can.
I’ll mention in passing that the same was true for investment planning.
In the past couple of years, wine has become something of a hobby of mine (in fact, I’m about to dip my toe in the pool of wine making*).
I’m tempted, say, next time my hubby gets a nice bonus at work, to buy a $50.00 bottle of Chardonnay, and a $6.00 bottle of Chardonnay, let my hubby pour them so I don’t know which is which, and see if the expensive stuff really is better (‘better’ being an objective term). Then, if the $50.00 stuff is better, is it 8X better? If it’s only 50% better, it’s not worth paying that much more for.
I know what varieties of wines I like. I’ve found some regions that seem consistently pretty good (incidentally, as I bought a bottle of Argentinian Merlot for $5.19 last week, the store clerk told me that a lot of places in Argentina and Chile have just about perfect weather and soil conditions for growing grapes, so they produce good wines. But they never advertise, so they also produce cheap wines). Chile, Argentina, Australia, California, all have perfectly acceptable, drinkable wines. If I’m just looking for a bottle of Cab to crack with the beef stew I made for dinner, frankly, I’d rather it cost $10.00 (or less) for the bottle than $40.00 or more, because then I don’t feel so guilty about polishing it off.
*Thanks to a fellow Doper (Hi, Silenus!), I found a place about 90 minutes from me that sells beer and wine making supplies, and will let you make beer and wine on their premises, using their ingredients and equipment, so you can see if you like the process enough to invest in the ingredients/equipment yourself!
I would say there is some value in expertise - however, not as measurable in the monetary sense that is reflected in wine pricing.
I think that, if you are experienced enough to know what you prefer, and can articulate that to a trained Somellier when ordering at a restaurant or purchasing at a wine shop, then they will be able to steer you to a good choice.
I’ve been to a few wine dinners where the expert guided us through tasting, it was quite interesting. Ex. prior to tasting a white, he explained that one of the wines was aged in certain White Oak barrels, whereas the other wine was not. So, when tasting, could we pick out the Oak flavors? If that’s something you like, then you can seek it out. If you prefer a buttery flavor instead, seek that out.
For the non-elite - buy what you like, if it’s Two Buck Chuck then go for it! I would say that every once in a while try a $20 - $30 bottle (especially if someone else is paying) just to remind yourself that it isn’t really any better to you.
If you think of wine as a collectable, rather then a consumable, it kind of makes more sense.
Is a $5 poster only a fraction as enjoyable as a $1mill original?
Is a diamond better then CZ in any real sense?
Why would I pay $1 for a 1943 steel penny?
It’s at least partially about how much people will pay for the privilege of having something uncommon.
I really do understand this POV. But in my own mind, it doesn’t wash. That poster or that steel penny are things I’ll be able to hand down to my children (I don’t have a lot of good jewelry, but we don’t mind spending some serious money on some occasionally, because it’s an heirloom, and something I, myself, will enjoy for years).
Wine, OTOH, is a consumable.
Maybe that’s the difference between folks like me and people who ‘know’ wine.
I live near the Napa Valley and enjoy good wine. I also like cheap wine. I know $10 bottles of wine that are wonderful, BV’s Century Cellars, for example. But a truly great wine $100 plus per bottle is, when it is right, is transcendent. Especially with a meal.
There are some really good $10-$20 wines that hold up really well against $70+ wines. (Which is the range we play in). But if we look for “complexity and depth” rather than just taste, we can get the expensive one more often than mere chance (which isn’t to say its necessarily the wine we prefer).
Sample size on this is pretty small. And the tasters in this case are Brainiac4 and myself - the times we’ve played this game with other people present some guessed right and some didn’t.
Its important when playing this game to play with like wines - a Pinot Noir against a Merlot is a much harder game to play - I couldn’t do better than chance on that. A Merlot from Napa vs a Merlot from Australia is easier - but I wouldn’t have much confidence. Two Napa Merlots, and while I wouldn’t bet my kids on it (unless they’d been pretty annoying) I think I’d do better than chance.
The wine snobs and the stereophiles are in a continual race to outdo each other with BS. I like good wine and I appreciate good sound reproduction. That’s not the issue.
As for the sound system, at some point you have to stop and ask yourself whether you are listening to the sound or listening to the equipment? As for the wine, are you enjoying something that tastes good and provides pleasure or are you nitpicking for flaws?
To me, life is too short to spend it looking for imperfections when there is so much to be enjoyed.
