The majority of smokers cannot tell the difference between their favorite brands and others. As long as we’re talking about the same type of cigarette. I imagine a menthol smoker would recognize a non-menthol cigarette. Likewise, most people who drink beer cannot tell the difference between their favorite brand and the competition. I can’t single out the wine tasters when people from all walks of life seem subject to that kind of bullshit.
Oh I read that as “on a 1-100 or 0-100 scale, with the wines ranked in the test ranging from 80-100.”
I think it’s some whites and some reds. Like if you can’t tell the difference between a Sauvignon Blanc and a Cabernet Sauvignon, there’s something wrong with your taste buds. But if it were a lighter red…
Yellow Tail is the standard wine in the US around here to bring to someone’s house where you won’t look terribly cheap but don’t want to spend a lot and don’t have rich friends. Barefoot, too.
Probably true. But cigarette smokers and beer drinkers don’t dig as deep a hole in their own ignorance. You’ll never see a smoker, for example, talking about his Marlboro’s subtle notes of oak, leather, and fresh peppercorn.
I’m calling bullshit on the calling bullshit on wine tasting.
I would bet that experts do exist who can detect and identify the subtle flavors. I made my own wine for several years and could recognise my wine or if I had subltle flavors sneak in. Likewise some years it was better than others, I always harvested my own grapes from the same field. Any wine taster should be able to detect changes in the yeast for instance and the flavors they impart. I think 90% bullshit 10% real.
Coffee blending is another example, a good coffee taster will be charged with writing a new recipe for coffee everyday from shipments comming from all over the world, his job is to make sure it tastes the same as it did a year ago or a day ago. Thats for real.There are people with supernatural palates and noses like Robert Parker but most people, even wine critics, do not have these abilities. Does that make Parker a “fake”?
I’ve seen taste tests with expensive and cheap vodkas too, and people couldn’t tell the difference. I think they said that Smirnoff did as well as Grey Goose. They didn’t use any of the absolute cheapest vodka available though.
From the article it’s not clear to me if the 80-100 point scale means “that’s where all the ratings landed - between 80 and 100” - or “this scale really goes only from 80 to 100.”
If it’s just that they rated all the wines in the 80-100 range, then a 4% spread isn’t so bad, and I’d say wine-tasting is just mostly bullshit - but with some actual general trend behind it.
If it’s that the scale really only goes from 80 to 100, then wine tasting is total bullshit, and that stupid scale is evidence enough of the claim. Who the hell has a scale from 80 to 100?
I don’t think it’s “bullshit” as much as it is an indication that the relationship between what we experience and our senses is complex and relative.
Wouldn’t a profession claiming to objectively quantify something so subjective be, by definition, bullshit?
It is even worse than 80-100 - while the scale is technically 50-100 for the two biggest publications - you can see that is in reality not the case:
The histogram so show it isn’t like they are doing this in some rigorous manner where the bottom x percent get this rating.
If the 4 points is on that scale - it is huge.
There does seem to be some ability in some cases. Not wines, but mythbusters had Adam an Jamie try and rate several stages of vodka being filtered - and they couldn’t rate it for crap - while their expert was able to do it no problem. And I have seen at least one interview with a guy who could identify wines by pretty much year and vintage on tasting them (although I am not sure how rigorous the tasting is).
But yes - I am glad to hear I haven’t been hallucinating. If not one of those people said “that is weird - I would have almost guessed that was a white” (and I would hope they would have considered a statement like that as proof they could tell the difference) - then obviously these experts are being influenced by the same thing the rest of us are. Basically they are cold reading wine and the people around them - probably unknowingly.
This stuff is extremely easy to test (and cheap). I’m waiting for all the wine experts to prove us wrong.
I don’t smoke cigars, but it seems that some of the companies emphasize subtle notes. I don’t know if Cigar Aficionados sit around talking about the Cabernet undertones or whatever, but they do have their own magazine (guess the title).
As for beer, many craft brewers talk about all the tastes you can supposedly find on their websites and menus. It gets almost as pretentious.
You can quantify subjective data, I do it all the time. I’m not sure how you might do that with wine, perhaps give people two glasses and have them say whether they like A or B better? Nothing about magnitude or such. Then try again with a different pairing and different raters, ideally rater if not double blind, counterbalancing, and some trials should have the same wine in each glass. A bunch of stats, then poof. That doesn’t require giving an arbitrary number while comparing to a wine you had two hours ago.
I haven’t seen that episode, and do think expertise has something going for it, but I also wonder if many experts, perhaps subconsciously pick up on: “this tastes like Belvedere. I know Belvedere is good. Therefore the stuff in my hand is good.” And certain manufacturers may pick up on that, making their drink taste a similar way. Tastes like rubbing alcohol to me, but then I’m one of those rare ones who prefers gin.
Old news.
The same thing applies to just about anything subjective. I once did a blind tasting at my homebrew club. Beers were brought out in pitchers, with nothing known about them other than that they were “homebrew.” The club raved about the complexity, clean taste, depth of hopping and all that rot. Then I revealed that they had been drinking Olde English 800, Schlitz Malt Liquor, Colt .45, and Country Club.
I’m not allowed to run tastings anymore.
silenus, that’s funny. I hope it’s a true story. Craft beer snobs annoy me just as much as wine snobs.
Every word is true. They were pissed, to say the least. Several people looked very stupid.
I find the descriptions of wine to be mostly BS. I rarely taste anything that resembles what I’m supposed to be tasting. That said, my wife definately tastes things that I don’t and that goes with beer too. We usually buy $10-$15 bottles of wine but steer clear of chardonnays and merlots.
As far as homebrewers and the tasting that silenus did - that is too funny. I homebrew and have rubbed elbows with people who think they know alot about beer and how it should taste…they can be just as pretentious and snobby as the wine experts.
Next pit thread: Audiophiles!
Fun experiment:
Replace any audiophile review with a wine review and see if you can tell the difference.
As as I’m concerned, any activity that requires you to spit out the alcohol is bullshit.