<story><title>Is wine fake?</title><url>https://asteriskmag.com/issues/1/is-wine-fake</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>gspencley</author><text>There have been a lot of blind wine tastings done and the results are always interesting. Sometimes cheap bottles score as high, or higher than vintages. Other times people can spot the cheap &amp;quot;carton&amp;quot; wine easily.&lt;p&gt;My wife and I love to cook, have discussed opening our own restaurant, have eaten at lots of very expensive &amp;quot;haute cuisine&amp;quot; restaurants and have tasted lots of wines.&lt;p&gt;Part of the &amp;quot;problem&amp;quot; is that taste is subjective and can be influenced through suggestion. So the atmosphere, the price, the meal pairing can all affect a person&amp;#x27;s appreciation of the glass.&lt;p&gt;I remember an episode of Penn &amp;amp; Teller&amp;#x27;s Bullshit where they had a &amp;quot;water sommelier&amp;quot; at a restaurant who would upsell customers on speciality bottles of water and they were all filled with the same tap water from the same garden hose at the back of the restaurant. The results were fascinating. Subjects swore they tasted different from one another.&lt;p&gt;The real question, in my opinion, is whether a high-priced bottle is &amp;quot;worth it&amp;quot; by as near-objective standards as possible. In other words, given two bottles of different prices, all else being equal, would the average person prefer the taste of one over the other?&lt;p&gt;That varies widely from one wine to another. My wife and I have enjoyed a good vintage but we are also perfectly content with a $15 bottle from a local vineyard here in Ontario, which is our &amp;quot;go to.&amp;quot; I&amp;#x27;m equally partial to a $15 Rothschild Merlot or Pinot Noir and I wonder if the truly exceptional wines that I&amp;#x27;ve tasted at restaurants were more about the environment, the food pairing, the company and the occasion than they were about the flavour in isolation.</text></item><item><author>lkrubner</author><text>I worked at WineSpectator.com in 2012-2013. I&amp;#x27;ll say this in their favor: the wine tastings were blind. A bunch of interns would set up the wine tasting, pouring the wine into glasses and then hiding the bottles. Only after everything was setup were the editors allowed into the room. So when the editors drank the wine, they had no idea if they were drinking a $9 bottle or a $900 bottle. They had to focus on the taste and balance, and write their report. Only afterwards were they told which wine they had tasted.&lt;p&gt;Having said that, I&amp;#x27;ll also mention, the way the editors struggled for new adjectives did sometimes make me laugh:&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;a vast, hearty body, notes of blue and a hint of graphite steel&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;a radiance similar to the sun at dawn, a strong body, notes of orange&amp;quot;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>retrac</author><text>I learned the secret in my mid-20s whilst brewing my own cider as a poor student.&lt;p&gt;Take some decent apple juice without preservatives.  Add a bit of yeast; baking yeast for bread at the supermarket will do just fine.  Observe basic sanitation principles.  Add some sugar, perhaps 150 g per litre of juice.  Leave the concoction in a cool, dry place for a few months.  A one-way seal for the CO2 release is preferable (a balloon works) but is not strictly required; leave the cap on loose.  Carefully pour off the result into a new vessel.  Let this settle for another month.&lt;p&gt;A very palatable drink results at about 4 - 5% alcohol by volume.  People figured this out thousands of years ago.  And they did not have plastic bottles, germ theory, or infinite hot water on tap.  It&amp;#x27;s trivial to make an alcoholic beverage.  The rest is finesse.  And posturing.</text></comment>
<story><title>Is wine fake?</title><url>https://asteriskmag.com/issues/1/is-wine-fake</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>gspencley</author><text>There have been a lot of blind wine tastings done and the results are always interesting. Sometimes cheap bottles score as high, or higher than vintages. Other times people can spot the cheap &amp;quot;carton&amp;quot; wine easily.&lt;p&gt;My wife and I love to cook, have discussed opening our own restaurant, have eaten at lots of very expensive &amp;quot;haute cuisine&amp;quot; restaurants and have tasted lots of wines.&lt;p&gt;Part of the &amp;quot;problem&amp;quot; is that taste is subjective and can be influenced through suggestion. So the atmosphere, the price, the meal pairing can all affect a person&amp;#x27;s appreciation of the glass.&lt;p&gt;I remember an episode of Penn &amp;amp; Teller&amp;#x27;s Bullshit where they had a &amp;quot;water sommelier&amp;quot; at a restaurant who would upsell customers on speciality bottles of water and they were all filled with the same tap water from the same garden hose at the back of the restaurant. The results were fascinating. Subjects swore they tasted different from one another.&lt;p&gt;The real question, in my opinion, is whether a high-priced bottle is &amp;quot;worth it&amp;quot; by as near-objective standards as possible. In other words, given two bottles of different prices, all else being equal, would the average person prefer the taste of one over the other?&lt;p&gt;That varies widely from one wine to another. My wife and I have enjoyed a good vintage but we are also perfectly content with a $15 bottle from a local vineyard here in Ontario, which is our &amp;quot;go to.&amp;quot; I&amp;#x27;m equally partial to a $15 Rothschild Merlot or Pinot Noir and I wonder if the truly exceptional wines that I&amp;#x27;ve tasted at restaurants were more about the environment, the food pairing, the company and the occasion than they were about the flavour in isolation.</text></item><item><author>lkrubner</author><text>I worked at WineSpectator.com in 2012-2013. I&amp;#x27;ll say this in their favor: the wine tastings were blind. A bunch of interns would set up the wine tasting, pouring the wine into glasses and then hiding the bottles. Only after everything was setup were the editors allowed into the room. So when the editors drank the wine, they had no idea if they were drinking a $9 bottle or a $900 bottle. They had to focus on the taste and balance, and write their report. Only afterwards were they told which wine they had tasted.&lt;p&gt;Having said that, I&amp;#x27;ll also mention, the way the editors struggled for new adjectives did sometimes make me laugh:&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;a vast, hearty body, notes of blue and a hint of graphite steel&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;a radiance similar to the sun at dawn, a strong body, notes of orange&amp;quot;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>p1necone</author><text>The secret is that a lot of cheap wine is pretty darn good. I imagine there&amp;#x27;s somewhat of a correlation between price and quality, especially at the absolute bottom end of the pricing scale. But it&amp;#x27;s a very loose correlation.</text></comment>