<story><title>Has wine gone bad?</title><url>https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/may/15/has-wine-gone-bad-organic-biodynamic-natural-wine</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>gascan</author><text>&lt;i&gt;they&amp;#x27;ll comment on different &amp;#x27;subtle notes of chocolate&amp;#x27; in a product that is entirely made of grapes and yeast.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;This, at least, is IMO not a valid criticism. I make beer, and two easy examples are cloves &amp;amp; banana. Fermenting beer too warm leads the yeast to overproduce esters, which taste like bananas. Too cold leads the yeast to overproduce phenols, which taste like cloves. It&amp;#x27;s very real &amp;amp; very obvious.</text></item><item><author>nrclark</author><text>It&amp;#x27;s crazy how much of the wine world is an &amp;#x27;emperor&amp;#x27;s new clothes&amp;#x27; kind of situation.&lt;p&gt;There was a study done a little while ago (&lt;a href=&quot;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.caltech.edu&amp;#x2F;news&amp;#x2F;wine-study-shows-price-influences-perception-1374&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.caltech.edu&amp;#x2F;news&amp;#x2F;wine-study-shows-price-influence...&lt;/a&gt;) which showed that people perceive wine very differently depending on price. Even if it&amp;#x27;s the same wine. So somebody who&amp;#x27;s told they&amp;#x27;re tasting a $90 bottle will rate it much better than somebody who&amp;#x27;s told they&amp;#x27;re tasting a $5 bottle, even though they&amp;#x27;re both drinking the exact same thing.&lt;p&gt;After all the uproar over Brochet&amp;#x27;s &amp;quot;The Color of Odors&amp;quot;, I did a tasting with a few friends where I chilled red and white wines down to the same temperature, and had them try the wines blindfolded. Across 6 people who all considered themselves wine enthusiasts, it was pretty dicey even being able to tell a Merlot from a Sauv Blanc. Maybe it was my just my lame friends, or maybe I chose bad wines. Or maybe not.&lt;p&gt;Different professional wine tasters will rate a given wine extremely differently. And they&amp;#x27;ll comment on different &amp;#x27;subtle notes of chocolate&amp;#x27; in a product that is entirely made of grapes and yeast.&lt;p&gt;I would be genuinely surprised if a double-blind test revealed that aging a particular bottle actually makes it taste better in a measurable way. Different, maybe. But if &amp;#x27;better&amp;#x27; is subjective, then it&amp;#x27;s by definition not &amp;#x27;better&amp;#x27; in an absolute sense.&lt;p&gt;I enjoy a nice glass of wine, don&amp;#x27;t get me wrong. But the culture around it is elitist and unscientific, and I&amp;#x27;m glad to see winemakers trying to tear it down a peg or two.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>jpk</author><text>I tend to agree.  I&amp;#x27;ll also point out that it&amp;#x27;s partly an issue of language.  I feel like (at least in the case of English) the words for describing taste are less developed than, say, sights.&lt;p&gt;So while I can describe a car finish as &amp;quot;matte black&amp;quot;, or &amp;quot;iridescent blue-green&amp;quot; without resorting to simile, I can&amp;#x27;t describe flavors without saying something like, &amp;quot;it tastes like {another thing you may have also tasted}&amp;quot;.  So wine tasters end up leaning on seemingly wacky comparisons to communicate the subtleties they perceive (real or imagined).</text></comment>
<story><title>Has wine gone bad?</title><url>https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/may/15/has-wine-gone-bad-organic-biodynamic-natural-wine</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>gascan</author><text>&lt;i&gt;they&amp;#x27;ll comment on different &amp;#x27;subtle notes of chocolate&amp;#x27; in a product that is entirely made of grapes and yeast.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;This, at least, is IMO not a valid criticism. I make beer, and two easy examples are cloves &amp;amp; banana. Fermenting beer too warm leads the yeast to overproduce esters, which taste like bananas. Too cold leads the yeast to overproduce phenols, which taste like cloves. It&amp;#x27;s very real &amp;amp; very obvious.</text></item><item><author>nrclark</author><text>It&amp;#x27;s crazy how much of the wine world is an &amp;#x27;emperor&amp;#x27;s new clothes&amp;#x27; kind of situation.&lt;p&gt;There was a study done a little while ago (&lt;a href=&quot;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.caltech.edu&amp;#x2F;news&amp;#x2F;wine-study-shows-price-influences-perception-1374&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.caltech.edu&amp;#x2F;news&amp;#x2F;wine-study-shows-price-influence...&lt;/a&gt;) which showed that people perceive wine very differently depending on price. Even if it&amp;#x27;s the same wine. So somebody who&amp;#x27;s told they&amp;#x27;re tasting a $90 bottle will rate it much better than somebody who&amp;#x27;s told they&amp;#x27;re tasting a $5 bottle, even though they&amp;#x27;re both drinking the exact same thing.&lt;p&gt;After all the uproar over Brochet&amp;#x27;s &amp;quot;The Color of Odors&amp;quot;, I did a tasting with a few friends where I chilled red and white wines down to the same temperature, and had them try the wines blindfolded. Across 6 people who all considered themselves wine enthusiasts, it was pretty dicey even being able to tell a Merlot from a Sauv Blanc. Maybe it was my just my lame friends, or maybe I chose bad wines. Or maybe not.&lt;p&gt;Different professional wine tasters will rate a given wine extremely differently. And they&amp;#x27;ll comment on different &amp;#x27;subtle notes of chocolate&amp;#x27; in a product that is entirely made of grapes and yeast.&lt;p&gt;I would be genuinely surprised if a double-blind test revealed that aging a particular bottle actually makes it taste better in a measurable way. Different, maybe. But if &amp;#x27;better&amp;#x27; is subjective, then it&amp;#x27;s by definition not &amp;#x27;better&amp;#x27; in an absolute sense.&lt;p&gt;I enjoy a nice glass of wine, don&amp;#x27;t get me wrong. But the culture around it is elitist and unscientific, and I&amp;#x27;m glad to see winemakers trying to tear it down a peg or two.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>amyjess</author><text>And then on top of that you have strains of yeast that are specifically bred to produce large amounts of &lt;i&gt;both&lt;/i&gt;, such as the yeast strains used in Hefeweizen (German-style wheat beer; specifically, the cloudy kind that still contains the yeast sediment) [yes, I know you know this, but I&amp;#x27;m explaining for the wider audience].&lt;p&gt;In fact, the main difference between German-style and American-style wheat beers is that German-style examples have lots of banana esters and clove phenols, while American-style examples don&amp;#x27;t. The sole reason for the difference is the strain of yeast used.&lt;p&gt;And it&amp;#x27;s not just a wheat beer thing: in general, American yeast strains are bred to produce cleaner fermentations than European strains. The distinct flavors of English and especially Belgian beers are due to the fermentation byproducts produced by the local yeast.&lt;p&gt;I love beer chemistry.</text></comment>