And you really had to wonder about the bottles of 1923 Roumier Bonnes-Mares included in the sale. The domain was founded in 1924.Heh.
I somehow find myself laughing at the prospect of these obnoxious billionaires getting ripped off. There's a particular style of aggressive high-end frat-boy wine snob that just annoys the crap out of me, and I enjoy watching them get taken.Might... inspire someone to start selling them fake wine!
Bill Koch, brother of tea-party-funding Charles and David KochTrue, but I have to admit a Wine Party sounds like more fun, so long as the snobs stay at home.
Well that certainly wasn't an important detail to add to a story about wine. If it was that important, couldn't the author just write Koch Industries?
lstanley: "Bill Koch, brother of tea-party-funding Charles and David KochI skimmed the article and missed that line. Here's how it's an important detail:
Well that certainly wasn't an important detail to add to a story about wine. If it was that important, couldn't the author just write Koch Industries?"
Bernard: It's all waffle! Nobody is prepared to admit that wine doesn't have a taste.posted by asperity at 10:11 PM on May 14, 2012 [5 favorites]
Manny: Of course you can't taste anything, you smoke eighty bajillion cigarettes a day. What's that you're eating?
Bernard: It's some sort of delicious biscuit.
Manny: It's a coaster!
The hypothesis of very strong variations in representations, even among expert subjects, could also be demonstrated by a third experiment.It could indeed be demonstrated. Let me know when it is.
The real red wine was described from an olfactory and gustative point of view in classical red wine terms. Whereas the white wine was described in usual white wine terms during this first experiment. In a similar fashion the white wine of the second experiment was described with white wine terms, this opposed to the same white wine coloured red. The Chi test carried out on the descriptions permitted the affirmation that the subjects described the two wines of the colour red in an identical fashion whereas one of them presented the aromas of a white wine. On the contrary the presence of the colour red in the white wine reversed the description of its descriptive parameters. In this experiment the perception of fragrance and taste conformed therefore to colour."[I]n an identical fashion" probably leaps out at you, but you'll note from the context that we're talking about abstract descriptive terms, and not "notes of lemon and citrus" versus "oaky and full of cherry and pomegranate." So. Sounds to me like he's actually talking about abstract descriptive language, couched in terms that the subjects were only peripherally familiar with from reading Parker's guides to the great chateaux. Maybe there's something in the analysis that warrants a sweeping generalization like "experts couldn't tell the difference between red and white wine?"
It should absolutely not be imagined that the perceptive representation of great or small wines relies only on their label or their colourNope, that still sounds like it's contributing toward the general theme, "sensory inputs can color the analysis of other, seemingly-unrelated sensory inputs." He did MRI studies and everything! What he did not do, however, is make any sort of statement in support of how the article was synopsized by "You're Not As Smart As You Think You Are" (and the irony therein is duly noted). Which leads me back to my original statement:
He's (editor's note: pronoun refers to Jon Carroll of the SF Gate and everyone else who took the snippet and ran with it) absolutely full of shit, and I can't even begin to fathom why anyone would believe anything he wroteNo serious person would ever make the claim that red and white wine cannot be distinguished by someone who knows what s/he is talking about. It's a ridiculous statement, parroted by those who enjoy sneering at people who like different things than they do. There's plenty to laugh at in this story without insisting that wine enthusiasts are all either deluded or playing a long con.
I read "The Billionaire's Vinegar" (about the Hardy Rodenstock wine forgery case) about a year ago. It is so similar to this story that if this were fiction I'd accuse the author of ripping off "The Billionaire's Vinegar." I guess there's some cons that you can run over and over again without people catching on (except Mr. Koch - who has now sued Rodenstock three times but keeps running into jurisdictional issues).I expect that Benjamin will be hearing from Mr. Wallace's lawyer any day now.
If you try to fool someone, by selecting wines intended to deceive, you can. But if you serve wine in the condition (temperature, etc) in which it is designed to be served, with all the various sensory inputs untampered with (including the label!), the person tasting it stands the best chance of experiencing the wine honestly and directly.Is that true, though? One might argue that in order to truely experience the wine in a pure way you have to remove all potentially biasing signals. So that means no bottle, etc. The problem is the whole idea that these expensive, rare wines are somehow truly 'better', in proportion to their cost. That seems highly unlikely in reality.
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posted by JPD at 2:21 PM on May 14, 2012 [2 favorites]