Walterodim
Only equals speak the truth, that’s my thought on’t
2yr 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.
There's also stuff that goes beyond "interesting". For example, Glenmorangie objectively has an airy taste. It's like the best sub $50 whiskey that you can buy if you don't like being assaulted with the barrel taste, and it also somehow does better than vodka at being smooth. Makers Mark is also a pretty good sub $30 bourbon, to my taste--but it can be somewhat objective, I'm pretty sure that if we give a random person a dram of Makers Mark and Jack Daniels they would recognize the more refined taste of the former.
I remember the best tequila producers in Mexico saying that there's no way a bottle of tequila should cost more than $40. But - the market was demanding super overpriced tequilas. So, they shrugged their shoulders and marked up the price to $200, and people loved it.
I usually buy Cabo Wabo, which is the cheapest 100% agave at the store I go to other than 1800 (which I don't like). But I have to admit Cuervo Platina is really good. Looks like it's a $60 bottle, though, nowhere near $200.
Whiskey, I think, is a market where people are intentionally different. Jack Daniels isn't marketing to the same people as Woodford who aren't marketing to the same as single barrel offerings. I thing there are often huge sweetness differences which are easiest to pick up on. Is the same true of wine? Are the $10 winemakers intentionally making sweeter wine to appeal to college girls?
I am adjacent to the wine business and winemakers absolutely make sweeter wine to appeal to a mass market. Especially at the cheap and widely distributed end of the spectrum. That's what a lot of people want, and the more industrial side of the industry is happy to oblige.
I agree about whiskey too. Jack Daniel's and Woodford are owned by the same company, but appeal to very different people. Same with Old Forester, also the same company. Not just because of the flavor profile, but the branding and perceived associations too.
I've little doubt experienced tasters can come to know what they are tasting with some high level of accuracy. The more interesting question is whether the more expensive product is "better" than the cheaper product, considering 'there is no accounting for tastes.'
When you're buying a piece of furniture, let's say a dresser, it's a bit more clear cut. Here's an example:
Let's say you are choosing between a $100 chipboard/cardboard dresser at Kmart or an $800 all real wood dresser with the same dimensions & function.
The real wood dresser is "better" in ways that are demonstrable. It will last much longer, it can be refinished, it will hold a heavier amount of clothes per drawer, the drawer bottoms won't buckle or bend, the drawers will slide as expected, etc. etc. It's objectively better in terms of it's utility. (Plus it carries better signaling value.)
But what if you're trying to choose between two real wood dressers within identical dimensions and materials...but they have different finishing stains with different colors. This is what wine/whisky differences are often about. Which stain is better? And why?
Unless there is a difference in the protection the different stains offer, it's all preference. Value will be dictated by the preferences of the buyer, and those preferences will be driven largely by things like trends, culture, and the maybe the rarity of each stain (which is just signaling if there is no added utility).
It may be, by the way, that whisky A takes 10x the time and effort and money to produce vs. whisky B, so it's much more expensive, but that is no guarantee the taste will actually be preferred on the merits of taste alone. People will say, "Whisky A is MUCH better! They use the best process! I can taste the difference!" But this all takes place in a world where brand preferences are strong partly because of the cognitive failings of human brains, such that people have tricked themselves into wanting things that are actually not as good.
Relatedly, I've had the experience a couple times in the last couple months where I went to a nice restaurant and paid a relatively large amount of money for a meal that I sincerely didn't enjoy as much as I enjoy meals from casual dining joints.
Why do I pay 5-10x the price for a meal I don't enjoy as much?
Mostly signaling. I was on dates, and the stigma attached to a first date at Panera Bread or Panda Express would be too much work to overcome, so I fork out the big bucks to sit in a socially acceptable place and eat socially acceptable food. I bow to convention and signal to my date I'm aware of the norms and capable of participating.
Walterodim
Only equals speak the truth, that’s my thought on’t
fozz 2yr ago
Good points in general, and I can't speak for the wine part, but do want to be a bit pedantic about the whiskeys:
This is what wine/whisky differences are often about. Which stain is better? And why?
In the whiskey world, some differences are like this, but some really are more objective, like the dresser. Whether they're worth the extra money or not will be in the eye of the beholder, but it really does cost a lot more to produce a 12-year whiskey than a 4-year whiskey. Evaporation directly results in a loss of the angel's share, the capital costs of sitting on stock and warehousing it are significant, and staff have to continually monitor barrels (some things need to be taken earlier, you can't just rely on everything aging evenly). Some products also include finishing in other barrels (port or rum barreling has become pretty stylish). At the end of the day, I suppose someone could still prefer the cheaper 4-year, but I think it's pretty unlikely that you'd ever get that result with any consistency in a blind taste test.
I think your point holds up much better when comparing products that are objectively similar - does the price tag on a 9-Year Willett bottle make any sense? Not to me, which is why I don't buy it. Should 12-year bottles of Van Winkle branded things really run up into the four figures? Well, based on the couple times I've gotten to try them, I'd say that it absolutely doesn't make sense and that people like having those bottles on their shelves for status. But really, I will actually insist that most people who like bourbon will find a good 12-year single barrel more enjoyable than the mass market products from the same distillery.
A final note on signaling is that the hypothesis is doing too much work. I can't speak for others, but I don't host people very often and most of the people I host don't care about whiskey. I (probably overpaid) for a pricey Bardstown bottle recently - I don't think I even personally know anyone that has even heard of their products. Of course, I could have been convinced by marketing hype, I find that entirely plausible, but I can't really see the path to that being about signaling. Pay for a bottle that literally no one I know cares about, pour a dram at home with no guests, plop down and watch 1883. That seems... not about signaling. The most straightforward story is that it's actually good whiskey and there isn't a need to tack on any other motivation.
The obvious caveat applies that the article is about wine, not about bourbon - I'm mostly just assuming that the wine world behaves pretty similarly because it has all of the same underlying social dynamics and subjective impressions of flavors.
People signal to themselves, because you have a mental image of yourself in addition to others having a mental image of you. It may not be important for you to have others see you as wealthy, tasteful, refined, knowledgeable. It may still be important for you to see yourself as that. Why else would you test your own ability to identify whiskey? You're not immune to your own judgmental gaze.
I take your point about some whisky being orders of magnitude more time-consuming & expensive to produce, but that's part of my point.
Some products may advertise being "handmade!", and it takes 10x more time & effort to make them, but a machine actually does a better job of producing that product. People will still often pay more for the handmade product if that characteristic is used as a selling point, because brand recognition and perceived value are examples of how the human brain is easily hacked. People have clustered together notions of "quality" with the concept of "handmade" and reality is hard-pressed to convince them otherwise.
From the essay:
Or consider the famous Pepsi Challenge: Pepsi asked consumers to blind-taste-test Pepsi vs. Coke; most preferred Pepsi. But Coke maintains its high market share partly because when people are asked to nonblindly taste Coke and Pepsi (as they always do in the real world) people prefer Coke. Think of it as the brain combining two sources of input to make a final taste perception: the actual taste of the two sodas and a preconceived notion (probably based on great marketing) that Coke should taste better.
This is truly remarkable data. People come to expect Product A is better than Product B, and that expectation drives their experience...even when they actually think Product B is better when branding is not available.
On signaling: I'd say it's much more influential than we realize. Further, there is a sort of "self-signaling" at play. It's a deeper discussion, but I believe people's choices are a part of a narrative they are telling about themselves, and it contributes to their experienced happiness/satisfaction (Kahneman) as they traverse life. We all want to be the kind of character in the story who "appreciates good whisky" and "spends more for quality." We don't want to be the guy who has undiscriminating tastes.
Which is also a bit of a hoax/mirage. We know why Pepsi wins the Pepsi challenge: More Sweetness, less acidity. Those things also make Pepsi lose the Pepsi challenge if consumers are asked to grade drinking an entire can, particularly if it gets diluted by ice or gets slightly warmed over the course of drinking the can.
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.
My girlfriend and I enjoy wine, and have a glass, each, at dinner nearly every night. I’d say we’re hobbyists.
I suppose I could get certain red and white varietals confused based on production method, maybe.
Red wines (made from red varietals) are fermented with the skins/stems/seeds. White wines can be made from any varietal but the fermentation happens absent the skins/stems/seeds. (If you ferment white varietals with the skins/stems/seeds you get orange wine.) Tannins are the chemical compounds imparted by including the skins/stems/seeds and they are quite noticeable (they impart a dry feeling in your mouth after consumption, and impact the flavor).
Now, if I had to blind taste test a white made from Pinot Noir grapes, or uncharitably some uncommon red varietal, there’s a chance I could confuse it for something else, but I don’t think I’d fare all that poorly.
But if the blind taste test was a red wine versus a white wine, that’s far too easy to discern.
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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.
There's also stuff that goes beyond "interesting". For example, Glenmorangie objectively has an airy taste. It's like the best sub $50 whiskey that you can buy if you don't like being assaulted with the barrel taste, and it also somehow does better than vodka at being smooth. Makers Mark is also a pretty good sub $30 bourbon, to my taste--but it can be somewhat objective, I'm pretty sure that if we give a random person a dram of Makers Mark and Jack Daniels they would recognize the more refined taste of the former.
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I remember the best tequila producers in Mexico saying that there's no way a bottle of tequila should cost more than $40. But - the market was demanding super overpriced tequilas. So, they shrugged their shoulders and marked up the price to $200, and people loved it.
I usually buy Cabo Wabo, which is the cheapest 100% agave at the store I go to other than 1800 (which I don't like). But I have to admit Cuervo Platina is really good. Looks like it's a $60 bottle, though, nowhere near $200.
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Whiskey, I think, is a market where people are intentionally different. Jack Daniels isn't marketing to the same people as Woodford who aren't marketing to the same as single barrel offerings. I thing there are often huge sweetness differences which are easiest to pick up on. Is the same true of wine? Are the $10 winemakers intentionally making sweeter wine to appeal to college girls?
I am adjacent to the wine business and winemakers absolutely make sweeter wine to appeal to a mass market. Especially at the cheap and widely distributed end of the spectrum. That's what a lot of people want, and the more industrial side of the industry is happy to oblige.
I agree about whiskey too. Jack Daniel's and Woodford are owned by the same company, but appeal to very different people. Same with Old Forester, also the same company. Not just because of the flavor profile, but the branding and perceived associations too.
Great to know.
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Meanwhile in Hungary.
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Go figure, people don't like bitter tannins. The ones who do are really into wine, and they don't buy nearly as much as the mass market does.
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Kim Crawford, Kendall Jackson, Woodbridge, etc. are 💯 marketed to different demographics than Caymus, Guigal, etc.
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I think it's more complex than this.
I've little doubt experienced tasters can come to know what they are tasting with some high level of accuracy. The more interesting question is whether the more expensive product is "better" than the cheaper product, considering 'there is no accounting for tastes.'
When you're buying a piece of furniture, let's say a dresser, it's a bit more clear cut. Here's an example:
Let's say you are choosing between a $100 chipboard/cardboard dresser at Kmart or an $800 all real wood dresser with the same dimensions & function.
The real wood dresser is "better" in ways that are demonstrable. It will last much longer, it can be refinished, it will hold a heavier amount of clothes per drawer, the drawer bottoms won't buckle or bend, the drawers will slide as expected, etc. etc. It's objectively better in terms of it's utility. (Plus it carries better signaling value.)
But what if you're trying to choose between two real wood dressers within identical dimensions and materials...but they have different finishing stains with different colors. This is what wine/whisky differences are often about. Which stain is better? And why?
Unless there is a difference in the protection the different stains offer, it's all preference. Value will be dictated by the preferences of the buyer, and those preferences will be driven largely by things like trends, culture, and the maybe the rarity of each stain (which is just signaling if there is no added utility).
It may be, by the way, that whisky A takes 10x the time and effort and money to produce vs. whisky B, so it's much more expensive, but that is no guarantee the taste will actually be preferred on the merits of taste alone. People will say, "Whisky A is MUCH better! They use the best process! I can taste the difference!" But this all takes place in a world where brand preferences are strong partly because of the cognitive failings of human brains, such that people have tricked themselves into wanting things that are actually not as good.
Relatedly, I've had the experience a couple times in the last couple months where I went to a nice restaurant and paid a relatively large amount of money for a meal that I sincerely didn't enjoy as much as I enjoy meals from casual dining joints.
Why do I pay 5-10x the price for a meal I don't enjoy as much?
Mostly signaling. I was on dates, and the stigma attached to a first date at Panera Bread or Panda Express would be too much work to overcome, so I fork out the big bucks to sit in a socially acceptable place and eat socially acceptable food. I bow to convention and signal to my date I'm aware of the norms and capable of participating.
Good points in general, and I can't speak for the wine part, but do want to be a bit pedantic about the whiskeys:
In the whiskey world, some differences are like this, but some really are more objective, like the dresser. Whether they're worth the extra money or not will be in the eye of the beholder, but it really does cost a lot more to produce a 12-year whiskey than a 4-year whiskey. Evaporation directly results in a loss of the angel's share, the capital costs of sitting on stock and warehousing it are significant, and staff have to continually monitor barrels (some things need to be taken earlier, you can't just rely on everything aging evenly). Some products also include finishing in other barrels (port or rum barreling has become pretty stylish). At the end of the day, I suppose someone could still prefer the cheaper 4-year, but I think it's pretty unlikely that you'd ever get that result with any consistency in a blind taste test.
I think your point holds up much better when comparing products that are objectively similar - does the price tag on a 9-Year Willett bottle make any sense? Not to me, which is why I don't buy it. Should 12-year bottles of Van Winkle branded things really run up into the four figures? Well, based on the couple times I've gotten to try them, I'd say that it absolutely doesn't make sense and that people like having those bottles on their shelves for status. But really, I will actually insist that most people who like bourbon will find a good 12-year single barrel more enjoyable than the mass market products from the same distillery.
A final note on signaling is that the hypothesis is doing too much work. I can't speak for others, but I don't host people very often and most of the people I host don't care about whiskey. I (probably overpaid) for a pricey Bardstown bottle recently - I don't think I even personally know anyone that has even heard of their products. Of course, I could have been convinced by marketing hype, I find that entirely plausible, but I can't really see the path to that being about signaling. Pay for a bottle that literally no one I know cares about, pour a dram at home with no guests, plop down and watch 1883. That seems... not about signaling. The most straightforward story is that it's actually good whiskey and there isn't a need to tack on any other motivation.
The obvious caveat applies that the article is about wine, not about bourbon - I'm mostly just assuming that the wine world behaves pretty similarly because it has all of the same underlying social dynamics and subjective impressions of flavors.
People signal to themselves, because you have a mental image of yourself in addition to others having a mental image of you. It may not be important for you to have others see you as wealthy, tasteful, refined, knowledgeable. It may still be important for you to see yourself as that. Why else would you test your own ability to identify whiskey? You're not immune to your own judgmental gaze.
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I take your point about some whisky being orders of magnitude more time-consuming & expensive to produce, but that's part of my point.
Some products may advertise being "handmade!", and it takes 10x more time & effort to make them, but a machine actually does a better job of producing that product. People will still often pay more for the handmade product if that characteristic is used as a selling point, because brand recognition and perceived value are examples of how the human brain is easily hacked. People have clustered together notions of "quality" with the concept of "handmade" and reality is hard-pressed to convince them otherwise.
From the essay:
This is truly remarkable data. People come to expect Product A is better than Product B, and that expectation drives their experience...even when they actually think Product B is better when branding is not available.
On signaling: I'd say it's much more influential than we realize. Further, there is a sort of "self-signaling" at play. It's a deeper discussion, but I believe people's choices are a part of a narrative they are telling about themselves, and it contributes to their experienced happiness/satisfaction (Kahneman) as they traverse life. We all want to be the kind of character in the story who "appreciates good whisky" and "spends more for quality." We don't want to be the guy who has undiscriminating tastes.
Which is also a bit of a hoax/mirage. We know why Pepsi wins the Pepsi challenge: More Sweetness, less acidity. Those things also make Pepsi lose the Pepsi challenge if consumers are asked to grade drinking an entire can, particularly if it gets diluted by ice or gets slightly warmed over the course of drinking the can.
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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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My girlfriend and I enjoy wine, and have a glass, each, at dinner nearly every night. I’d say we’re hobbyists.
I suppose I could get certain red and white varietals confused based on production method, maybe.
Red wines (made from red varietals) are fermented with the skins/stems/seeds. White wines can be made from any varietal but the fermentation happens absent the skins/stems/seeds. (If you ferment white varietals with the skins/stems/seeds you get orange wine.) Tannins are the chemical compounds imparted by including the skins/stems/seeds and they are quite noticeable (they impart a dry feeling in your mouth after consumption, and impact the flavor).
Now, if I had to blind taste test a white made from Pinot Noir grapes, or uncharitably some uncommon red varietal, there’s a chance I could confuse it for something else, but I don’t think I’d fare all that poorly.
But if the blind taste test was a red wine versus a white wine, that’s far too easy to discern.
Huh. Never heard of that. Where can I get an orange wine?
Georgia is the best country for orange wines, but there are orange wines from Italy (Friuli). You might have to search for "amber wine" to find them.
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My local Total Wine has two different bottles on offer. It’s not super common but should be able to track down a bottle if you call around.
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