Walterodim
Only equals speak the truth, that’s my thought on’t
1yr ago
In my own life, I have anecdotal experiences with bourbon and other whiskeys that have pretty thoroughly convinced me that the idea of wine tasting being "fake" is a combination of wishing that the expensive things weren't special, wishing that the experts were fake experts, and a desire to feel superior to silly people fussing about such things. I accumulate bourbon much faster than I drink it, so I now have a shelf with dozens of bottles, ranging from mundane (but enjoyable!) stuff like Bulleit and Woodford Reserve up to fairly uncommon and pricey bottles like EH Taylor Barrel Proof Uncut and Michter's 10 Year Rye. When my wife or I grab a pour for each other, we often take them blind and see if we can guess what we chose for each other - at this point, our success rate in picking them out is getting pretty close to 100%. This is true even for fairly similar and competitive products - it's not that hard to tell the difference bewteen a pair of single barrel picks that are bottled at the same strength and have similar age statements.
So, where I'm going there is that I'm a rank amateur, barely even a hobbyist by the standards of the whackos that are super into whiskey, but I can tell the difference between two products that are both distilled corn aged in newly charred American Oak barrels for X years. If I can pick that up, it seems impossible to me that wine experts legitimately can't tell the difference between red and white varietals - the experimenter either screwed up or they found the fakest experts around. Ever since I noticed that, I just brushed off the "studies" that say otherwise, but it's still nice to see the breakdown from Scott.
First, the experts weren’t exactly experts. They were, in the grand tradition of studies everywhere, undergraduates at the researchers’ university.
Honestly, this is such a bad starting point that I can't imagine that anything extracted from the data could plausibly be useful - everyone involved from the researchers to the journalists breathlessly reported on those silly wine people is bad and should feel bad.
I 100% agree in being able to tell apart whiskey, even whiskey that isn't far apart price-wise (think Woodford vs Buffalo Trace).
I'm less sure about things like "tasting notes", as the article's first paragraph mentions, and there seems to be less research in this area. Certainly different wines can have different chemicals, but to what extent can they be distinguished from each other in a complex mix of substances? Do they even appear at a high enough volume to be detectable? Sometimes there are very distinct flavors, but in other cases there's apparently nothing that sticks out.
Agree on tasting notes - sometimes, I'll sips something and have something highly specific pop to mind immediately. Other times, I can start to put it together a bit after a Kentucky chew. Still other times, I never get beyond, "I don't know, it tastes like bourbon, which is a good thing for bourbon to taste like". I can easily accept that other people are much better at teasing these things apart, particularly the folks that are actually managing the barrel and bottle programs. Freddie Noe probably tried more different bourbons and understood more about their taste profiles before he was legal to drink than I will in a lifetime.
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Notes -
In my own life, I have anecdotal experiences with bourbon and other whiskeys that have pretty thoroughly convinced me that the idea of wine tasting being "fake" is a combination of wishing that the expensive things weren't special, wishing that the experts were fake experts, and a desire to feel superior to silly people fussing about such things. I accumulate bourbon much faster than I drink it, so I now have a shelf with dozens of bottles, ranging from mundane (but enjoyable!) stuff like Bulleit and Woodford Reserve up to fairly uncommon and pricey bottles like EH Taylor Barrel Proof Uncut and Michter's 10 Year Rye. When my wife or I grab a pour for each other, we often take them blind and see if we can guess what we chose for each other - at this point, our success rate in picking them out is getting pretty close to 100%. This is true even for fairly similar and competitive products - it's not that hard to tell the difference bewteen a pair of single barrel picks that are bottled at the same strength and have similar age statements.
So, where I'm going there is that I'm a rank amateur, barely even a hobbyist by the standards of the whackos that are super into whiskey, but I can tell the difference between two products that are both distilled corn aged in newly charred American Oak barrels for X years. If I can pick that up, it seems impossible to me that wine experts legitimately can't tell the difference between red and white varietals - the experimenter either screwed up or they found the fakest experts around. Ever since I noticed that, I just brushed off the "studies" that say otherwise, but it's still nice to see the breakdown from Scott.
Honestly, this is such a bad starting point that I can't imagine that anything extracted from the data could plausibly be useful - everyone involved from the researchers to the journalists breathlessly reported on those silly wine people is bad and should feel bad.
I 100% agree in being able to tell apart whiskey, even whiskey that isn't far apart price-wise (think Woodford vs Buffalo Trace).
I'm less sure about things like "tasting notes", as the article's first paragraph mentions, and there seems to be less research in this area. Certainly different wines can have different chemicals, but to what extent can they be distinguished from each other in a complex mix of substances? Do they even appear at a high enough volume to be detectable? Sometimes there are very distinct flavors, but in other cases there's apparently nothing that sticks out.
Agree on tasting notes - sometimes, I'll sips something and have something highly specific pop to mind immediately. Other times, I can start to put it together a bit after a Kentucky chew. Still other times, I never get beyond, "I don't know, it tastes like bourbon, which is a good thing for bourbon to taste like". I can easily accept that other people are much better at teasing these things apart, particularly the folks that are actually managing the barrel and bottle programs. Freddie Noe probably tried more different bourbons and understood more about their taste profiles before he was legal to drink than I will in a lifetime.
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