Can Professional Wine Connoisseurs Really Not Tell the Difference Between Expensive and Cheap Wines?
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 27 ก.ค. 2019
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Having a seasoned tongue that can detect the subtle differences between different kinds of adult grape juice is a sure sign of class. In fact, the go-to Hollywood trope for showing that a character is refined is to give them a penchant for expensive wines. Even Hannibal Lecter, one of the most terrifying and cultured characters in film history, had a soft spot for chianti. But the question at hand today is can even the professional wine connoisseurs actually tell the difference between a Chateau Cheval Blanc 1943 and a Bota Box Chardonnay?
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Great video, Simon!
A good woman, drinking the the good wine with you is better.
Have you considered doing a series of 10 - 30 second videos? Videos where you ask the question and answer it in 10 seconds. I'm sure you have some topics that don't warrant a longer video or simply don't lend themselves to a deeper treatment, but are interesting none the less.
Please do one one tea sommeliers! Thank you for your potential consideration!
step 1: put artificial tongue on computer
step 2: make a learning AI that uses the tongue
step 3: train AI to tell the difference between different types of wine
step 4: profit
step 5: avoid assassination from former wine condensers that you just drove out of business
The doctor told me to drink two glasses of red wine after a hot bath.
I can't even finish drinking the hot bath.
I thought you will say you live in a tub now.
:)) I thought you were going to say that nowadays you take between five and ten hot baths a day.
@uncletigger
"Okay, I'll hold the spike. You hold the mallet. When I nod my head, you hit it."
*bouguereau snorting/laughing en François*
**Dad Chuckles**
How tell if a wine is good or not. Taste it, do you like it? If so then it a good wine, no matter what the price. That was the best advice I was ever given about wine.
Just this. My ex who was studying for her Sommelier exam came away with that pearl, (Plus a lot of other fluff). But the biggest question in the end is, "did you like it'?
@@notj5712 Jesus how posh is your circle? ;)
I used to say that about Thunderbird and Ripple and Boone's Farm and Mogan David but people said I was crazy. Now I know I'm not. Just a wine connesieur.
@@QuantumRift 🤣💎👏 What's the word? THUNDERBIRD! 🤣
@@1969GrassHoppaYup. glug glug glug glug glug
Reminds me of an experiment I heard about where people were given different flavors of Jello, and found that the (artificial) color of the Jello was EXTREMELY important to which flavor was perceived.
Same happens with perfume
Them: This wine has hints of blueberry and honey, is grown in the flight path of a small airport, and is grown in volcanic soil. It was harvested in 1996 and brewed by ten men with curly moustaches, and has had a ginger cat sleeping on the barrel every night.
Me: Mmmm, alcoholic grape juice.
2 years old, but whenever I hear like "it has hints of nostalgia..." I'm just like "wtf does that mean? Does it taste like a nintendo? Does it fear communists???"
@@sadisticbadger1287 😂😂😂
@@sadisticbadger1287 I would hope all my wine is still fearing the soviets.
As a former wine salesman (low level) I determined that finding out what sweetness a customer liked was all I needed for a great pairing and a happy returning customer.
Very true!
Aubrey Leona this! I worked at a wine/spirits shop for several years, and the absolute key is engaging customers so see what they like (and often what's for dinner), then using knowledge/experience to find the perfect bottle for THEM :)
@@desmofan1864 The Food context is stupidly important. I always laugh when people eat sweets with a bottle of Champagne and complain that the champange is bad
And this is why I would trust you to pick my wine
Aubrey Leona This is the correct answer.
The more wine I drink, the less I taste it.
The more expensive the wine is, the more I enjoy it when someone else is buying.
Your name fits perfectly with both sentiments.
That's actually where the idea of price equalling quality comes from. I've had some shit wines that were 15 years and $350 that tasted like burnt Welch's. I've also had some $15 boxed wine that was fantastic. But that is only about personal taste. However, there is at least one study where the proctors told the applicants which wines were more expensive, and they tended to associate the the more expensive wines with being the better wine. However they then told them the same expensive wines were the cheap ones, and lo and behold they still answered as the more expensive wine as being the better quality ones, despite the false pretense.
Really dumb way to value something, you should value the taste itself, if someone buys you wine whose taste you actually enjoy it means you have more in common with them. Most expensive wines are way overrated, some of the best wines you will ever taste in your life are in the middle and even lower price ranges. Never be a snob about wine, try to taste as many different ones as you can ;)
@@cesar9058 is English your first language?
@@cesar9058 right. Because when i see a list of wones I've never heard of i should choose the one i like. Hmmm
Many years ago, I remember a news story about the mother of a girl who was in kindergarten. You know those drawings that little kids scrawl out....bring home & the parent ends up sticking it on the refrigerator door? THIS particular mother put her daughter's artwork in a frame....snuck it into one of those big fancy 'metropolitan museums of modern art'....and when no one was looking....managed to hang it on their wall. It hung there for several days, before a janitor noticed it didn't belong there. Meanwhile, a lot of art patrons & critics had been 'oohing & ahhhing' over it.....thinking it must be the work of some master. That's how I feel about most food & wine & music critics.
Or that time another janitor accidentally "destroyed" a piece worth some ungodly sum. It was a banana taped to the wall. The janitor threw it in the trash, like he's supposed to. The artist just serenely taped up another, it didn't matter because it wasn't art. It's all a way for rich people to make themselves and each other more rich. We pick an artist, bid up their work gradually, and then boom they can donate some godawful piece to someone they hate, and get huge a huge tax break for what is essentially a ruined piece of canvas or pile of nonsense junk. Also organized crime launders money this way. It's allll bs
The art industry is definitely one that's been overtaken by weird art movements. Me, I prefer a lot of classical art, I don't know all the terms but the stuff that looks realistic and like a lot of time went into it. Not necessarily exclusively realism but also an abstract painting of something like little aliens from a faraway planet under a red sky with a red sun, purple grass, blue clouds, and trees with bicycle wheel fruit. Stuff that isn't realistic but there was time and intent that went into it. A lot of art these days just don't look......art-y.
On the other hand, this is making me think that my art that I make as a hobby of silly stuff like Sailor Moon and Samara from The Ring having a girls night out together. if I make up some silly story behind it, and the fact I wear sunglasses all the time might make them think I'm something special and not just some weird girl with an obsession with sunglasses, and I could make enough money to buy a new car. Not that I would, I like my car. I'd probably put it in the bank and save it.
i remember the mythbusters episode where they tried to make cheap vodka into top shelf by filtering it through multiple charcoal filters. they then had people rate all 10 . the vodka expert actually nailed it he got all 10 correct. jaime did ok as i recall. everyone else did like flipping a coin. so there may be some people that can tell the difference, but that may be rare .
I think it's like music appreciation. Some people are tone deaf and while they enjoy music, they can't really tell the difference in skill levels. Others are musical super geniuses who can compose an entire score in their heads. There are wine tasters who can taste a vintage and remember it forever. Others, well, any bottle will do.
Personally I’m such a wine snob I can the difference between some wines by sight alone. I can instantly tell the difference between red & white.
Not if I put food colorant in it you can't.
@@BooBaddyBig if you put red color in a white wine, it turn red aka red wine ;)
Teach me your ways, sensei
Next master sommelier right here!
Considering how different red and white wines taste I can't believe they couldn't tell the difference, fair enough rose and white as they taste virtually the same.
Glass 1: "Ugh. That's a bronze at best"
Glass 2: "Mmm. Not bad, maybe a silver"
Glass 3: "Aw yeah, that one's gold! "
Server - "It's all from the same bottle"
Well yeah
I really don’t like wine but with strong alcohols i find that the first sip after not drinking for a while isn’t the same as the others let alone the second g’ass or a glass taken the day after
While funny........old wines can settle causing flavor differentials between top and bottom of the bottle as well as texture/smoothness
In reality the amount of time the bottle has been opened can make a major difference to the flavour - if you open a good bottle and start drinking it straight away then it will often be tight and closed, leave it an hour and it will be better - leave it overnight and it can be substantially better.
Thirst Fast me when I was a server
Drake ICN audio absolutely matters, and there is absolutely going to be a difference between lower quality and higher quality speakers that is measurable. It’s not the same.
I once saw a documentation on German TV about a wine loving chemist who assembled a "wine" from pure alcohol plus water plus several aromas (it was his hobby and he had years of experience). The sommeliers gave it a gold medal. The "wine" never saw a single grape and needless to say the sommeliers were devestated after being informed of this fact.
Good, some of the snobs could use a reality check.
I highly doubt that
Best advice I heard years ago at a newbies wine-tasting course in Italy was, “For a good bottle of wine, just don’t go below about €6 a bottle, the minimal cost of all the materials and handling.”
Solid advice.
Anything lower and you know you are paying for a drink that is synthetic.
I would say 15 to20. Good wine tend to start at that price level. Ofcourse can be exceptions. But this is highly subjective also. Someone who drinks 95 to 100 points wine s on a regular basis, can find those above bad.
When forced to choose a wine from a wide selection I go with the one with the funniest label.
I go for the one that doesn't smell like vinegar
I go for the one that doesn't have any wine in it.
Yep, it's known that the wines that sell the most have animals on the label. Like a kangaroo or a penguin or whatever.
@@notj5712 to be fair there is a shiraz I enjoy with a kangaroo on it.. Its not bad and its cheap lol
All I need considering wine isn't my thing!
Fair
Being paid to be a professional wine snob, God bless free enterprise.
Ikr
bahahaha YES!
Right?
This video reminded me of my boss, who is a true wine connoisseur. He once mentioned to me that a lot of so called “wine connoisseurs” weren’t really, in his opinion they just used the term as an excuse to drink in the daytime. If a wine tastes good to you, you have a good wine.
French study a while back took several "sommeliers" and "wine experts" and tested them expensive and cheap wines covered, but had fake labels. They accidentally flashed the fake labels. If the flashed fake looked expensive, it got a higher score, sometimes even with the same wine in it. ...maybe the same one mentioned just after 13:00
Why isn't there a temperature strip on the bottle,
showing the optimum for that particular wine?
I have such a strip on my aquarium.
Probably because it's subjective, though I suppose the wine-maker could include his opinion on the bottle -- probably the temperature that was used at the vinyard.
I seen some bottles at Trader Joe's and Aldi that give recommendations to serve cooler chilled and room temp.
Give this man a medal!
No, for real, that sounds genius. Patent that!
On most wine bottles there is in print a recommended drinking temperature.
I agree. I think that all dry reds need to be at cellar temperature, 18°-20°C. My inlaws serve wine at warm room temperature (25°C). So the expensive wine they serve doesn't taste as good as my 10€ bottle.
Challenge- drink wine every time Simon says sommelier.
Result... Hammered.
Omggg you aren’t suppose to swallow
@@swordstrafe Daz what she saaid
I prefer the drink everytime Simon losses his shit game
Thanks. I was wondering how that was spelt.
or drink every time he says "monkey brain" hahaha
I have been a wine enthusiast for years. I usually can tell the difference between wines if we consider wide ranges. That is, I usually can differentiate between a $ 5 and a $ 50 bottle, but it is hard if not impossible for me to differentiate between a $ 40 and a $ 50 bottle. Around 10-20% of wines are in my concept, grossly miss-priced. I sometimes encounter $ 50 and even higher priced bottles that are hardly worth $ 10 and sometimes I find $ 8 bottles for which I'd gladly pay $ 50. Brand, region and country prestige are usually to blame for this. The same is true in art and other creative works BTW.
Putting a fancy label on something is often enough to charge triple the price
My son, a chef in a high class Vegas restaurant tells me the story of how they pranked a sommelier by giving him a cheap bottle of wine and hyping it as an expensive wine.After going through the whole bit of pretentiousness of a wine snob, they showed him what he tasted.Man, was he pissed when he found out what he drank.Needless to say, a good laugh was had by all except him.
“I mix Orange Crush and Ripple. I call it Cripple!”-Fred Sandford
W O W !!!!
Remember Flapple, forget what that was
I remember Fred once mixed Champagne and Ripple. The result? .... "Champipple!".
Pretty sure once it was 'cream and ripple'...ha
LOL!!! I remember that episode ..
😂. 😂. 😂. 😂. 😂. 😂
I find it all very pretentious, and that story that french wine snobs preferred a Californian wine to a French wine was great
@ArmchairWarrior Nope, it is pretentious
I mean, the pretentious thing in that is assuming that Californian wine is somehow automatically worse than French one. Californian wine can be really good.
In part also because grapevines are Old World branches grafted onto New World roots all over the world nowadays, even in France.
Actually.....Most California wine is from French cuttings. Later when France had a huge blight, Cuttings from California saved the French wine industry. So, essentially all French wine is now Californian? Or Vice versa, or whatever.
@@varana actually now (besides the french, who also like to pretend they beat the nazis by themselves) its widely considered for california to have some of the best wine in the world.
I agree. The March 2019 video ( th-cam.com/video/CzuyG33r6kQ/w-d-xo.html ) had some of the same pictures. More importantly, they both show Simon's obvious amusement at the results produced in the tests. These videos are all terrific because they are polished productions, with good writing, good video editing and outstanding delivery by the narrator. Many thank yous for your efforts.
It's amazing how pretentious we humans can make of the simplest of things.
the world of wine is far from simple.
@@TheMV1992 It's actually quite simple. All of the complexities are irrelevant hogwash that people made up to be snobby.
I've seen a show do something similar with water. The experiment used simple hose water and the people were told that each water was from a different part of the world. The people actually believed they were sampling water from around the world. Fascinating.
I'm leaving, everyone here just wants to wine.
🤦🏻♂️🤦🏻♂️🤦🏻♂️🤦🏻♂️🤦🏻♂️🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮💥
@Daniel Huffman -One or the other for me thank you. I sip Wild Turkey.
Bunch of sour grapes
Funny but OH GOD NO
"Menthol" not "Methanol"! You would be in deep Doo Doo if you were swigging Methanol. 9:16
Verbal "typo". ;-) -Daven
Um roughly 2percent of the alcohol in your average beer is methanol. In small doses your body is able to break down wood alcohol quite easily and it's in large doses it becomes any danger. Most of your mouth wash is made with wood alcohol to avoid ethanol taxes.
@Mackenzie Mcgrath-- I wonder if that's why I *hate* mouthwash? I'm a retired chef, and a certified super-taster, so that really may be why! Thanks for that info!
Nope, it's methanol
@@penguinslife7013 Not in mint's it's not
"I hate wine snobs."
~ Me, Grammar Nazi extraordinaire
There was a really well though out experiment where random people were tasked with memorizing in a relatively short ammount of time, a chessboard position, and then the same task was given to chess grandmasters in order to compare the accuracy with which they could recall the position a few minutes later.
To everyones surprise, as long as the position was a randomly generated and therefore not possible to arise from play e.g. an unpromoted pawn on the last row, (pawns must always promote when reaching the last row, therefore the position is impossible) or two kings in adjacent squares (since kings are not allowed to be in adjecent squares), the grandmasters faired just as well as everyone else - badly.
However, when the positions shown to the test subjects was sampled from possible positions arising from various openings, even with many pieces on the board and in complex structures the grandmasters had no difficulty whatsoever in memorizing them swiflty and to a very large degree of accuracy.
This just shows, how context is as important to the Human mind as computional power and how much the of our knowledge and abilities tackling problems hinges on capability to frame the issue in regards to our underlying body of learned experiences.
2
I thought being a "wine connoisseur" was completely made up, just so you can satiate your lowkey alcoholism.
Now I know I'm wrong.
No, you are still Right
It can be both an excuse to be a boozehound and a legitimate skill/classification.
Still an alcoholic, instead of the garden variety that fried their taste buds with cheap vodka and cheaper cigarettes decades ago you have to pay attention to what your drinking and wash your shirt.
why not both?
would make one not only a high functioning alcoholic, but that of receiving a cash bonus for your opinions of-on your coping mechanism
There is one major indicator I use to ID the cheap stuff. Potassium Sorbate. It's added to the really cheap stuff like Franzia or Carlo Rossie as a preservative. I can smell it from a mile away.
That's similar to my test for a really bad movie. If it has Kevin Sorbo in it, it's crap.
@@dansanger5340 Hold on. Kevin Sorbo was the actor in the Hercules TV series, which was really bad, but he guest stared on the spin off series Zena Warrior Princess, which was good.
In the early 80s my brother in law got out of the military after being stationed in northern Italy. He told me lots of stories about going into Yugoslavia on R&R, and brought me a bottle of red wine that he bought there. The bottle had a crown cap like a beer bottle, and he figured it had cost him .68. It was as good as any (at the time) $20 bottle of wine I had tried.
I would have love the bottle because of the whole story behind it.
My wife and I like to drink wine sometimes. We've found the wines we like are Spanish and Italian wines in the $20 (USD) range. We've never really appreciated all the hype around French wines, though we have had some good Bourgogne wines. On one occasion I saved up for a bottle of expensive white wine and on another a bottle of very expensive champagne. We didn't enjoy either. We've never made that mistake again. As this video makes clear, find what you like and enjoy.
Try some Portuguese wines, they are a good value. If you can find them Czech and Georgian wines are quite good too.
@@shinnam We have tried a couple Portuguese wines. They are good but very rare here. I've never seen any Czech or Georgian wines available at all. If they ever pop up, I'll buy them and try them out.
Spanish and Italian wines are actually consumed in their respective countries ;)
If you like Italian and Spanish wines, I highly recommend the Rhône region of France, specifically Chateneuf du Pape. The region is hotter and the wines are Granache and Syrah based, much more expressive and flavorful than the wines of Bordeaux which can come off as very tannic and heavy
In Italy I was at the home of a friend/coworker who was known at the office to have excellent taste, and we were talking about the universe, oil, vinegar, and wine. I told him I didn't drink much wine, but I had a good nose. He challenged me to sort some wines by "quality." He opened and I sorted nine bottles, commenting on the flavor notes and characteristics wine snobs focus upon and he was very impressed that I "got it 100%." He started to praise my skill, but I interrupted telling him I liked the second lowest rated wine and saying, "There is no accounting for taste, I can choose a good wine, but I'll seldom choose to drink it." Being a good host he always served wines I liked after that.
BS
About the IKEA table, I think some studies have found that peoples prefer the IKEA furnitures they assembled themselves to similar or higher quality already assembled furniture.
Yes, but that's only because ikea is good at bringing the prices down. Any pre-assembled furniture at the same or slightly higher price range would be much lower quality than ikea furniture. I can guarantee the same would not be true if you compared it to well made furniture. One would get more attached to a solid oak dining table that lasts them till the day they die than the particle core ikea table that starts wobbling or wearing through the veneer within a few years of use.
Slightly more expensive than ikea simply won't be higher quality
I got almost all my furniture from craigslist. You can get some really expensive/high quality stuff for cheap if you can take it off people’s hands.
Ikea os good if you want something there and then. But there's nothing like handcrafted furniture in IKEA, and know nothing about furniture. The techniques used to make the stuff, and the choice of materials is limited to mass produced techniques and cheap wood and materials. But, none of it is durable enough to pass on to your kids. Plus, as housing is ridiculously expensive, you need stuff that can take being moved around a lot, as more and more people are renting, and wages are stagnant. So, buying furniture that is assembled using solid wood and labour-intensive techniques is going to be expensive. Recently, even the cost of plywood and white pine has gone through the roof. So, sadly traditionally made furniture is a stretch too far for most, unless you buy secondhand.
There used to be regional differences in soda until water filtration got easy. I would not be surprised if there are differences in grapes grown in different dirt.
Worked in the restaurant industry for years and as a sommelier for one, this is the most fair and acutely written article I’ve come across :) big thumbs up.
The best wine is the one you like, regardless of price.
My great aunt teaches wine tasting, and that's what she told me, haha. What else is the point?
Haha my friends laugh that I like Manischewitz .. apparently they don't think it's real wine ..LOL!! and I'm not Jewish
I'm a sommelier by profession (WSET certified). This is usually what we say for our guest to make them feel good of their selection. 😁
But in reality, If money is not an issue, I bet they'll select the much more expensive ones.
But its true that there are a lot of underrated wines that cost a lot less than those highly rated ones.
"Ah yes, I sure love this $10,000 dollar wine"
"Sir this was bought at the local bottle king"
Customer: i know! The brand name is " $10,000 "
XD
Reminds meofFrasier and Niles Crane! They were forever spouting their expertise on fine wines! Did a lot ofwinetastins and tests! Onthethe sow, it was often in the script! 😆
Awesome episode ! Thank you for giving a complete explanation of wine knowledge and wine values.
A guy panhandling me as I was passing through a bad part of Vancouver, BC told me at great length how much he loved wine.
Tubmaster 5000 millionaires cant afford real estate in vancouver anymore.
Story checks out
the problems with wine tasters I have read about, have dealt mostly with judging contests that then get the wine rated in magazines. That these wine tasters have given varied scores to the same wine is the problem.
It's not necessarily the tasters fault, a wine may be labeled as the same wine, however the taste can vary wildly from year to year, due to many reasons from climate variation affecting grape growth, to the way the wine ages in the bottle (ETC) it's why the concept of vintages is a thing.
My 4yo son is the best wine steward I've ever had:
Me: "what kind of wine does daddy like?"
Him: "Green! no, I mean Red!"
Me: "exactly"
Wine is like art. Price oftentimes does not correlate to quality.
I once saw a wine described as having “oaky aromas of pencil eraser and mile (sic) chocolate ....”
The descriptions often sounds weird but you have to think about it : how would you describe some of the tastes and smells of your favorite foods if you couldn't refer to them directly ? How would you explain the taste of a strawberry to someone that has never eaten a berry ?
Actually supposing "mile" was "mild" this description doesn't sounds half bad, would have like to taste this wine.
I mean, I like humour so I would definitely at least try a wine which didn't take itself so seriously on the labeling. If it tastes good, then I will also come back to it.
"wine tasting is subjective" to a point... One of the problems I have with the judgements of some sommeliers and wine critics is that they know how to taste for flavors, but not what makes those flavors, or realizing the flaws in the process of any given wine because of off-flavors. Being a home brewer/wine maker for over a decade, working in a home-brew shop, and judging home made competitions I can tell you there are things you can taste and smell that are OBJECTIVELY flaws that occur during the wine making process and would even get commercial wines docked points if they ever dared enter such competitions. Case and point - I was watching a documentary about 3 or 4 friends trying to become master sommeliers, when one of them said of a wine something to the effect of "fresh-cut garden hose or tennis ball" (if someone could find that clip and link it that would be awesome!) I burst out laughing and had to explain to everyone watching it with me that that rubbery smell like "tennis balls" in that wine were probably phenols produced by a bacterial infection or wild yeast infiltration into the wine or poor rinsing of chlorine based cleaners from equipment - i.e. poor sanitation procedures at the winery in either case. Now, if it was a wine produced through natural or "wild" fermentation one could expect a mild amount of that if the winemaker knew how to do everything right. But if the wine is not being marketed as wild fermented and the winery purportedly uses clean yeast cultures, then we have a problem and you are being sold a bottle of infected wine that tastes about as bad as some of the home made stuff I've tasted made by people who don't sanitize equipment or don't rinse after using chlorine based cleaners. Maybe learning to judge and not just to taste has ruined wine for me a little bit, because I'd rather have a $20 bottle that tastes clean and well made over a highly marketed "prestigious" $100 bottle that I would fail at competition for fermentation faults but everyone else in the room thinks is wonderful.
Edit: found it - documentary called "Somm" from 2012 - discussion of tennis ball flavor at about 21 min in. th-cam.com/video/aiuYrb0Xeuo/w-d-xo.html Love the guy that says "I'll never use it [to describe wine], it sounds ridiculous" - completely clueless at the time of what that flavor means - and yes, he went on the become a master sommelier...
I agree with this, and what's funny is to me a $20 bottle _is_ an expensive wine (when I think cheap wine, I think Mad Dog 20/20, Wild Irish Rose, Cisco, etc. I have a slight soft spot for Mad Dog, was the first wine I drank back in high school, my older sister's boyfriend at the time would buy us some, unless you count my parents letting me have a sip of their wine when I was even younger).
In the book, Hannibal drinks an Amarone, not a Chianti (because he knows a Chianti doesnt pair well with something as greasy as liver). They changed it in the movie because they were afrais people wouldnt know what an Amarone was
Damn he took answering this question to the next level. Respect!
As my grandmother in Germany used to always tell me, "The eyes are able to taste, just as much as the tongue".
That's a wise saying.
Your grandmother was a wise woman.
Reminds me of my favorite Oscar Wilde line (from Dorian Gray), "Women love with their ears the way men love with their eyes."
And if you're blind? Things that taste good taste good who gives a fuck how it looks.
@@McGovern1981 Bit reactionary there, eh?
You may not consciously care how it works, but a lot of your food is actually engineered to look a certain way with this in mind, because people do taste things differently when they see them differently. Even changing the color changes the perceived taste. Same reason restaurants play with your food before they serve it... sometimes... assuming you weren't mean to the help.
We use every relevant sense available to us to determine the viability of food. Most animals do, as a matter of survival. Very hard to overwrite. You can say you don't care, but it affects you anyway!
Honestly, this just makes me wonder what a blind person experiences when they taste different foods.
On my honeymoon we went to this winery. During the taste testing the owner noticed I was really enjoying relishing the tastes and asked good questions about how it was made. He spoke about this special wine he makes very rarely with only the best grapes from his harvest and talking us through the whole process and why it took more effort to make that bottle. It was not included in the taste test we paid for (it was more than $20 a glass), but the owner decided he liked us. So he poured me a single glass a deep dark deliciousness. It might have been the power of suggestion and the specialness of the moment; it was the best wine I have ever tasted.
Apparently the very cheap wines are spiked with extra sugar as a filler, which is what makes them more headache-generating. I keep meaning to look into that more...
>Sponsored by a company that ships out wine to your "taste"
Yes, this sounds unbiased and perfectly reasonable.
Wrong question.
They should tell me the difference between GOOD and BAD wines. The difference between prices is something I can see myself, and don’t need expertise for that.
Unfortunately 'good' and 'bad' are subjective - what you like, I may regard as disgusting and vice versa. So a professional can tell you if a wine has any faults, is well made, can comment on the value for money, whether it is a good representative wine of it's area and style - and on that basis can say it's good or bad. But what you regard as good or bad is something else entirely.
@@malcolmrose3361 But once you know if you like the wines that are typical of such and such regions and terroir, you may use the expert opinion to guide your choice. :)
@@chaddaifouche536 As i said, an expert can tell you if a wine is representative of it's area and style - but that is way different to being able to give a definitive opinion on whether a wine is GOOD or BAD as Zoltan wanted. As well as knowing the region, you would also need to know the critic's preferences - and be guided accordingly. For instance, the wines that Robert Parker rated highly....I tended not to - for all the reasons he liked them, I frequently did not.
People usually equate a positive correlation in price with quality, that may be the case with some products and industries but not all
The way we experience food and drink is subjective which always makes it hilarious when people try and claim so may "right" or "wrong" ways to do things(plus keep in mind it's also cultural). Even stupid shit like how steak is cooked, because you are literally telling someone that the way they like something is incorrect. Pretention in food and drink is honestly one of the strangest things when you think about it.
Life is too short to be worrying about why people drink instant coffee or cheap beer. Especially when the answer is most likely because they enjoy it.
i mean you could say the same about music or food. what most wine professionals talk about when they talk about a good wine is the quality. there is no denying that a lot of more expensive wines have had more work and effort put into them. taste will always be subjective, that`s why some people`s favorite food can be a burger from Mac Donalds just like someone`s favorite wine can be the cheapest one in the supermarket. it may taste good to them but there is no denying that that wine more than likely is of less quality than a more expensive one in a wine shop or even one in the same super market. but i will always say that you just have to drink or eat what you like
I like well-done steak I've tried it other ways and I don't like the taste and mouth feel. EVERY wait person and cook thinks they must tell me multiple times I'm ruining it.
Local Liquor store chain does tasting events regularly. At one of these, my wife, myself and my eldest daughter tasted some 40+ Cabernet Sauvignons. all three of us found 2 wines in particular that we liked. One was a $120 bottle, the other was a $14 bottle.
You do a really good job of researching this stuff and pointing out the problems with the “common knowledge” other sources tout...especially considering the volume of content you produce. I say, “Well played” from across the pond in the USA.
In Italy I find that price is a pretty good guide. In the anglosphere, perhaps due to sellers preying on your lack of familiarity with wine, I have noted that price is not at all an indication of quality.
$5 wine is hard to drink. $12 wine is fine, but once I get past $20 to $25 wine I can't tell a difference at all.
The "MD" in "MD 20/20" stands for Mogen David. Actual Mogen David wine is Kosher and competes with Manischewitz wine among the Jewish community during the Jewish holidays. MD 20/20 is made from the part of each batch which a Rabbi cannot bless for reasons you'd have to ask a Jewish person to clarify. The closest I can come to is that once, I was drunk on "Mad Dog" and punched a Nazi skinhead out...okay, I lied, I punched him, he did NOT pass out, so I broke the bottle and told the fascist fuck to "come at me, bro" and he decided I was too insane, or "meshuga", to fuck with.
@@troyevitt2437 so MD is wine?
I wanted to comment this exact thing! 3 euro whitewine is overly sour and has terrible taste. But once you get to 10 euros its very drinkable. Over about 20 its all quite fine and the differences are very subtle!
@@stefanx8344 yup, the prices basically apply to white and red, as well.
@@libbydormouse318 yes. It's considered wine.
As a professional musician (and amateur wine enthusiast), I very much appreciate that comparison.
There’s a whiskey channel here on TH-cam who’s motto is ‘A good whiskey is the whisky you enjoy to drink the way you enjoy to drink it’.
Basically price doesn’t really matter it’s all about what you like.
wine is just baseball card collecting for rich people
This
Don't drink those ! The notes of wood are much too strong... ;-)
And as a way to launder money.
Sure, but I hope you don't eat baseball cards lmao.
That reminds me of the scene in Dirty Rotten Scoundrels where Michael Caine is teaching Steve Martin how to act sophisticated and is showing him his wine cellar full of expensive old wines. "I could never drink them, they mean too much to me."
When my ex had a bunch of yuppy ppl over one summer evening they wanted wine. They only wanted specific 'good quality' wine. I drove to the store. I put the second cheapest wine I could find into an expensive bottle along with some others I bought and ALL of the 15 or so supposed wine drinkers thought it was great. Lmao They still don't know. Each time I see her sip from a wine glass while swirling and sniffing now I laugh.
Right.
A person who doesn't like or respect good wine is unlikely to possess an empty bottle from an expensive wine.
Further, at the meal he'll have a completely full bottle that's had the cork removed and shoved halfway back in. That would never happen. Normally, you'd uncork the full bottle in front of your guests. It would be very weird to bring a bottle from the kitchen that's already been opened.
After uncorking the bottle, you'd pour the contents into a carafe to aerate the wine. If you just brought out the full carafe to the guests without the bottle, they wouldn't know that it came from an expensive bottle, so the story is B.S.
And then everyone clapped. Maybe they were being polite. Being a 'yuppy' doesn't mean you know anything about wine. I'm certainly not a 'yuppy' but can v quickly assess the quality of a wine, expensive or not.
From her house @Joe Al She keeps all of the liquor and wine bottles.She cuts them and paints them with her daughter and sells them on Ebay sometimes.Wine glasses to drink out of too.
@@williamblaker2628 How is it "weird" to bring an open bottle from the kitchen? How do you even know if was in a kitchen? Shut the hell up. You sound like a piece of shit, Im sure the internet is the only place you actually speak out so Im not wasting my time on you anymore.
@@B.D.E. One key aspect of being a yuppy is that they think they aren't, like you.
It's so nice to see a commentary that actually digs into the issue, addressing the foundations for it (i.e., how easily us humans are misled by our expectations and senses). Up vote for that alone.
First time I have liked, commented, and subscribed all at once. I'm very impressed with your presentation and apparent knowledge that you have of this specific concept. I hope the rest of your videos are this informative and, quite frankly, impressive. Thank you for your work and please continue to create such useful and interesting videos.:)
Simon is a great presenter he has great writers that do the research.
I've found most of my friends like the sweet cheap options. I personally like things very very dry. It has been my experience that you can't get dry wine cheaply. They don't have to be $1,000 a bottle, but they're rarely under $30
I once saw a clip of a wine expert analyzing three different glasses of wine. He tasted each one then asked for a sample of the first one... The other guy poured a bit more into the first glass and the so-called expert commented a bit on it, then asked for another sample of the second one. The other guy poured a bit into the second glass... FROM THE SAME BOTTLE! The expert failed to notice, sampled it again and commented on the differences between the second sample and the first... Same thing with the third sample... "Expert" was clueless the whole time.
I have to find this clip asap
@@PurplePinkRed it was something I saw on broadcast TV years ago, but there's always a chance it's hiding somewhere on TH-cam
Let me in on it too when you find it.
I'm doing a graduate degree in data science (applied statistics) and I'm sending this to my professor. There's so much here that touches on what we do and how we design experiments it's amazing.
As someone who works in the wine industry, I like the way he put things. Many of the experiments we see involving tastings- while interesting- are flawed and have too many variables. When doing a blind tasting, there are usually rules. Wines are stored at a certain temperature, opened at a certain time, no one is allowed to talk or make sounds that would influence your opinion. Only have water before a tasting, and do it early in the day so your palette is clean. This is the best way to hone the skill of wine tasting. I've been to a couple 'blue cup' tastings where the wine is in an opaque container so we don't know the color. I think those tastings became more popular after the experiment done on those students. I get a lot of grief from people bringing up these experiments, so I either ignore it, explain how the process works, or do a blind tasting with them.
I've always wondered about those experiments. How was temperature control? Were the red wines properly decanted (double or even triple for the expensive aged ones) before serving? If not, the conclusion should have been that expensive wines don't taste better than cheap wines when served inappropriately.
I was at a fancy wine tasting with a bunch of rich people once.
One wine which was poured for about a dozen people before they got to me (small servings), was very obviously spoiled. It tasted like tanic acid with a hint of grape. The dozen or so rich people who tasted it before me all acted like it was "interesting" and basically pandered to expectations. As soon as I tried it, i spat it out and told the person hosting the tasting that they were serving a soured bottle. It must have sat in a hot truck in shipping or something. He tasted it, and spat it out as well, got a new bottle, and tasted it himself before sharing. It really was a great wine, just not the spoiled bottle. It was pretty eye opening that so many people acted like it was good just because it was "supposed to be good".
Two upsides of the experience: 1) I realized that rich people and their money are really shockingly easily separated, a useful thing to understand clearly. and 2) every other wine I tasted after that bottle tasted really really good, it's amazing how much a mouthful of tanic acid can shift your pallet.
Essentially, in that episode of Black Books, where Dylan Moran and Bill Bailey decide to make their own wine because they drunk the very old fancy wine by mistake, they really would have just been better buying some cheap wine and pouring it into the expensive wine bottle. =D
Very informative video. Thanks.
I love how personally involved he is at the end! :)
While not the wine snob I've had the opportunity to have all types of scotch to include the very expensive. I found it to be much the same attitude in that many people can't tell the difference between a $1,000 bottle of Scotch and a $40 bottle of Scotch. In fact one of the very highly rated scotches that I enjoy quite a bit is also one of the less expensive scotches. I've had some very very expensive scotch, that I was not fond of, but that I was glad I was drinking anyway.
I’m amused by all of the art and interactive labels now being used by advertisers in effort to get our monkey brains excited when looking at dozens and dozens of choices in the grocery store.
That's because the majority of wine is bought in supermarkets by women doing their weekly shop who choose wines based on the label. If a brand doesn't stand out it doesn't sell and gets delisted.
I like wine. I like cologne. I feel equally about wine experts as I do about those who are oober-snooty regarding the complex composition of cologne/perfume. If it tastes great, drink it, if not, don't. I don't need an expert to tell me what my taste buds are experiencing. Likewise, when it comes to fragrance, I don't care how complex the composition or how your refined olfactory senses may be...if the majority of people (even if they be untrained, laypersons) if they think it stinks, it "stinks."
In wine, if you like it, drink it. In perfume, if you love it but laypeople think it stinks, I'd listen to the majority of the population before wearing it in public...
Thank you very much! I don't drink at all and I stay away from wine experts too. They both give me headaches!
Simon, this reminds me of a question I've often asked myself: Is there really some quality to violins made by the old masters like Mati, Stradivari, and Guarneri that modern violin makers are simply unable to produce? Can violinists really tell the difference when playing between modern violins and those made by the old masters? What about violinists or other musicians, conductors, seasoned listeners, etc., listening to a violin played by someone else?
For that matter, can they even tell the difference between modern violins of different price ranges. A cheap factory-made violin can be had for less than $100, complete with a bow and a case, but a hand carved violin made by a professional luthier can cost $100,000 or more, but is there really that much difference in tone or playability?
I'd really love to see a double-blind test where players have to guess the age, price, and if they can do it at all, who the maker was.
Thats why the violin industry is saturated with sharks. There is no real science in how to make a violin sound good like there are for other instruments. Its said that Stradivarius would go out into the woods at night, put his ear up to a tree and knock on it waiting for a response from the tree. If the response from the tree pleased his ear, he would proceed to chop it and make it into his next violin. Even when people make exact replicas of his violins, they dont come out sounding the same. Id say the violin industry is different than wine in that aspect. You can 100% tell the difference between a cheap violin and an expensive one. However, once you start comparing the expensive ones to expensive ones then the water gets murky cause as we know people just resonate with different tones. So, some think the Strad sounds better and some think the Amati sounds better.
Whenever I read that study, I remember a teacher I had in school. Middle of lunch one day he spat a bunch of milk all over a table, apologized and cleaned it up. We asked him about it later, he had accidentally grabbed vanilla milk instead of unflavored milk, when he took a drink he tasted something other than the milk he was expecting and assumed it must be sour and involuntarily gagged. Once he realized it was vanilla milk, he happily went on drinking it.
They make unflavored milk? Huh!
@@jollytosty Yeah, when you don't add a bunch of flavors to it, it tastes like milk. Crazy, I know
@@andrewwestfall65 i think i might of never had vannila milk, just choco, strawberry, and banana. Then the white milk which i dont think tastes like vannila ill have to figure out how to get my hands on some now.
@@jollytosty You can add some vanilla and sugar to regular milk if you want to make some at home
@@andrewwestfall65 oh god it reminds me of the time i watched a guy down a bottle of vannila extract
My favorite wine is Trader Joe’s merlot at $3. Not only does it tase good, but I feel better knowing it’s just as delicious as something random at 3x the price.
Learned alot about wine and wine making at a vineyard in Tuscany. Pretty interesting stuff and yes, the wine was excellent.
Whoever typed up the text cards for this episode clearly drank too much wine beforehand.
I make wine with ingredients purchased solely with an EBT card, and it tastes great.
Sugar and grape juice
@Coon It's not illegal to make wine personal consumption
I once judged a home brew beer competition, for a local brewery. Over the course many of that patrons were also asked to judge. The result was a placing of beers that the customers had judged.
The prize was your beer would be made and put on tap. This makes a lot of sense to me, many customers judged the beer and selected the one they would drink, making the winner the most beer.
One of my acquaintances is a master sommelier whom owns a wine import distributor. He imports from 40 countries and has a large portfolio. You would be amazed at how he can identify wines from just small. Someone breaks a bottle in the massive warehouse. He can walk in and tell you what wine bottle broke and where it was from around the world. Its actually a fun game for him.
Objectivity and subjectivity meet profession.
Pretty bold move creating a video about how no one can reliable tell the difference between wines to promote a new wine retailers sponsor. 😂
actually probably quite a good move, afterall the end result was "you like what you like" so who better to advertise on it than a wine company whose whole deal is finding you a wine you like.
@@SpydersByte A perfect pairing.
@@stevencrosby9891 :D
That's definitively not what he said ?
He said no one can reliably tell the difference between pretty good wines, even if one is much more expensive than the other. But if you go really down in grade, anyone can tell the difference.
He also showed that most of the experiments that are often cited are not really testing if experts can know the origin and type of wine they're tasting (they can, the master sommelier have a test exactly on that) but rather experiments that show how easily we humans get influenced (and they're often not exactly on the real experts despite the descriptions) which is a truth that get repeated often on this channel in many different contexts.
At the University of California at Davis, which is known as an agricultural studies and veterinary university, they offer a four-year oenology course for students who want to become wine makers or sommeliers.
My last job (before being medically retired) was at a private hunting club owned by a bunch of winery owners, so I got a very fast, very thorough wine education. My last year there I set up an al fresco luncheon of chilled, cracked Dungeoness crab, San Francisco sour dough bread, and all the fixings to make any sort of crab salad, or sandwich, the guys wanted. I took the liberty of choosing the wine and chilling several bottles of it while the guys were still out in the field hunting. When they got back, the most wine savvy member congratulated me on my choice of wines. That felt *really* good!
As a retired chef, it is terrible that I can no longer enjoy a lovely glass of wine with a nice dinner. Unfortunately, I take medication which doesn't allow me to drink alcohol. I have had a couple of drinks over the years on this medication, but never more than one glass at any time. My consumption is down to less than one glass of wine per _year._ Sadly.
3 reasons for drinking wine
1.) It taste great
2.) You plan on getting drunk
3.) Your a wine connoisseur that's wants the right wine with the right food basically the same as the first one
So only 2 getting drunk or tasting good stuff
"3.) Your a wine connoisseur"
You're
@@shawbros whoops my bad
So many typos in this one. You enjoying some wine while writing, Daven?
As a friend who’s not an expert but knows his fair share about wine said: “if you’re paying more than 5euros for a bottle, you’re already paying too much”
I make my own wine. Not because I'm cheap but because I enjoy the hobby. But my wines tend to come out at around $2 a bottle. When you make a 5 gallon batch of 25 bottles, the savings do add up, though.
You cannot get drinkable wine for 5 Euros in Austria, but can get pretty good in Hungary (and it is not that expensive even here), so that is pretty much dependent on the place where you buy that :)
Top tip from an ex wine writer. Most experts cannot tell the difference between vintage Pelorus (NZ sparkling wine) and vintage Krug.
I gotta come by more often, these sponsors are pretty good. Saved a load of money on wine, my mom is certainly going to be happy.
“Taste is subjective.” Repeat, ad infinitum.
I made a batch of homemade wine for my wife's sister's wedding, and while I thought it turned out ok but not spectacular, a guy at the wedding was amazed at the quality and said it tasted like a $20 bottle of wine.
10:40 The word "Oak" is missed in the onscreen quote.
Edit: 13:03 The words "in front" are missed in the onscreen quote.
About the mint eating and then drinking, I've also found a way to be able to eat food that would normally be too hot to. Take a glass of an ice cold drink, fill your mouth, let it sit for a few second, and slowly swallow it. Then quickly shovel that normally piping hot food into your face and eat before your mouth warms up. The ice cold sensation somewhat dulls your nerves so that the food doesn't seem to be that hot.
Your accent is so friggin' AWESOME that *sometimes* I have trouble telling if your sarcasm is natural or affected. Anyway, your delivery is excellent, period - making this not only informative but super entertaining.
The wheezywaiter quote was unexpected! Love that guy
So wise. ;-) -Daven
Oh dear! I love your podcasts and watch many, many of your videos and enjoy your content profoundly. Come on though, those typos on your flash-cards!
they had wine while creating this
My current working theory, as I read through the comments here, is that -- given the quip in the video about grammar nazis -- they're there deliberately to encourage comments from grammar nazis in an attempt to influence The Algorithm ;)
I have a mate that always getting the cheapest wine on the shelves. He bought me one and personally I don't really like it but when I am drinking the same wine with him, the taste ten times better as the middle range prices. And the most expensive wine that I've ever got was about $100 and I wasn't very happy with the taste and sure the experience of opening with the box and seeing a little booklet was great!