Hey,
Welcome to December 1st, wow mad right, but letās not fret, I promise youāve accomplished much more in this past year than you might think, so take the time you need to chill these next few weeks, appreciate the little things.
With the recent lockdown in Ireland, I really stuck my head down to work for the past 6 weeks, but Iām going to actively put my foot on the brakes with client stuff this month.
Iām going to focus on creating, creating just to create, creating for myself - something I havenāt taken the time to do in agesā¦
Anyway, Cāmere to meā¦
Interesting
Expensive Wine is a Lie š·
Expensive wine is like anything else that is expensive, the expectation it will taste better actually makes it taste better.
This isnāt about whether a trained and practiced wine taster can or cannot pick out subtle flavours and correctly identify wines by taste, they can, instead the question is whether or not their opinions are necessarily something you can trust when buying your own wineā¦
āIndividuals who are unaware of the price do not derive more enjoyment from more expensive wine. In a sample of more than 6,000 blind tastings, we find that the correlation between price and overall rating is small and negative, suggesting that individuals on average enjoy more expensive wines slightly less.ā
āThe pleasure we get from consuming wine depends both on its intrinsic qualities such as taste and smell and external attributes such as price and presentation. One may argue that the former influences our subjective appreciation through a bottom-up process, where the sensory apparatus plays a key role, and that the latter works through a top-down process, where beliefs and expectations about quality are important determinants.
We find that, unless they are experts, individuals who are unaware of the price enjoy more expensive wines slightly less.ā
Goldstein, R., Almenberg, J., Dreber, A., Emerson, J. W., Herschkowitsch, A., & Katz, J. (2008). Do More Expensive Wines Taste Better? Evidence from a Large Sample of Blind Tastings. Journal of Wine Economics, 3(1), 1ā9.
(Read more here)
Naturally, there are wines which are more expensive because the costs to make them are higher, such as working with a low-yielding grape, a small vineyard, fermented in brand-new oak barrels etc., but even still they are often not as expensive as they are marked up to be.
āIn 2001, Frederic Brochet conducted two experiments at the University of Bordeaux.
In one experiment, he got 54 oenology (the study of wine tasting and wine making) undergraduates together and had them taste one glass of red wine and one glass of white wine. He had them describe each wine in as much detail as their expertise would allow. What he didn't tell them was both were the same wine. He just dyed the white one red. In the other experiment, he asked the experts to rate two different bottles of red wine. One was very expensive, the other was cheap. Again, he tricked them. This time he had put the cheap wine in both bottles. So what were the results?
The tasters in the first experiment, the one with the dyed wine, described the sorts of berries and grapes and tannins they could detect in the red wine just as if it really was red. Every single one, all 54, could not tell it was white. In the second experiment, the one with the switched labels, the subjects went on and on about the cheap wine in the expensive bottle. They called it complex and rounded. They called the same wine in the cheap bottle weak and flat.ā
(read more - The Atlantic)
One argument against this is that wine experts donāt claim it to be an exact science and that it is unfair to look at it in such a way, as everyone enjoys slightly different tastes, which is true, but why is it then that they still donāt seem to even slightly agree?
The study below looked at the correlation of results at wine competitions, and found that the spread of results has the same distribution as tossing a coinā¦
āAn analysis of over 4000 wines entered in 13 U.S. wine competitions shows little concordance among the venues in awarding Gold medals. Of the 2,440 wines entered in more than three competitions, 47 percent received Gold medals, but 84 percent of these same wines also received no award in another competition. Thus, many wines that are viewed as extraordinarily good at some competitions are viewed as below average at others. An analysis of the number of Gold medals received in multiple competitions indicates that the probability of winning a Gold medal at one competition is stochastically independent of the probability of receiving a Gold at another competition, indicating that winning a Gold medal is greatly influenced by chance alone.ā
Hodgson, R. T. (2009). An Analysis of the Concordance Among 13 U.S. Wine Competitions. Journal of Wine Economics, 4(1), 1ā9.(read more - here)
Robert Hodgson, who published this study, is also a vineyard owner, and he conducted this experiment out of his own confusion seeing inconsistent results when entering his own wines into competitions for years.
From this same study, when tasting the same wine three times, only 1 in 10 judges consistently awarded the same medal. So they donāt even agree with themselves, let alone each other.
āIn 2011Ā Professor Richard Wiseman, a psychologist (and former professional magician) at Hertfordshire University invited 578 peopleĀ to comment on a range of red and white wines, varying from Ā£3.49 for a claret to Ā£30 for champagne, and tasted blind.
People could tell the difference between wines under Ā£5 and those above Ā£10 only 53% of the time for whites and only 47% of the time for reds. Overall they would have beenĀ just as a successful flipping a coinĀ to guess.ā
(read more - The Guardian)
My takeaway is that experts can accurately discuss what makes up the complex blend in a wine, a very difficult task, but they cannot consistently rate their preferences for such and their opinions, which often influence the cost, have nothing to do with whether you might like it or not, in fact, if you donāt have an acquired and practiced pallet for wines you will likely completely disagree with the āexpertsā.
āA good wine is a wine you like. A great wine is one your guests like too.ā
True objectivity is almost impossible. It is well researched in other areas that we like things and select favourites because of the perceived values that also come along, and marketers are very good at tapping into this.
Value is subjective, you might get a lot of enjoyment from an expensive wine,Ā but ask yourself, would you get that enjoyment if the same wine simply wasnāt expensive?
For those who prefer cheaper wines youāre not wrong at all, thereās nothing to say an expensive wine is better, itās just more expensive because it cost more to make or (more likely) because someone is chancing their arm.
Smile š
Watch šŗ
Vanity Fair just released that same interview with Billie Eilish but for the 4th year running.
Saved š·
Think š
Every peaceful looking place you have passed while on a train is not that peaceful since there are train tracks right next to itā¦
Thatās all š¤š½
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Guy