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In Reply to: RE: I find it interesting posted by bjh on April 14, 2014 at 17:10:59
Read Tim Hanni's book: "Why You Like the Wines You Like." Hanni is one of two Americans to first be awarded the title Master of Wine. He notes that the vast majority of those who have earned a "Master of Wine" designation actually prefer sweet wines over dry, but that’s a subject for another day.
Hanni explains that if you were to tell someone that the wine in glass A is a $4 concoction he will readily dismiss it as uninteresting. But if you suddenly say, “Whoops my bad, actually, that’s the $400 super-premium Napa Cab that no one can get their hands on,” it’s amazing and amusing how quickly the taster will discover new found respect for that wine. “Heh, heh, now it’s beginning to open up. Wow!”
Hanni recounts the night a friend brought a five thousand dollar magnum to his house for a dinner party. “It was a lovely wine,” says Hanni. The next day Kate, his wife, confronted him and demanded, “Why didn’t you tell me how expensive that wine is!”
Hanni says like any insensitive and stupid husband he asked, “What would that have mattered? It’s not as though someone is going to smell the wine and say, Wow!, this is worth thousands of dollars!”
His wife’s response was: “If I had known it was that special I would have paid more attention and enjoyed it more.”
Hanni says that, “She is, of course, right.”
There is a famous study that supports Kate’s position on knowing the value of a wine and how it affects one’s perception. See link below.
According to Stanford researchers when a person is told they are comparing a $5 wine with a $45 wine, when they are, in fact, sampling the same wine—the part of the brain that experiences pleasure will become more active when the drinker believes they are tasting the $45 wine.
I suspect the same is true for audio.
http://www.gsb.stanford.edu/news/research/baba
Follow Ups:
My in laws are wine lovers and we visit them once or twice a year. About 2000 or so they bought several cases of very good Bordeaux wines and we would have several bottles over the holidays. My father-in-law likes to keeo a journal regarding very good wines, so the only requirement was that we had to fill in tasting notes. We would discuss our thoughts about a wine, and at the end of dinner, I would write our consensus opinions. It was interesting to me that our opinions were quite consistent from year to year. Certainly not a blind tasting, and we typically paid more attention to the good stuff than the vin ordinaire that was the second and third bottles of the night, but I always felt like I could tell differences and preferences pretty clearly.
There certainly was some expensive stuff that I didn't care for very much, but almost all of the bottles had a distinct character.
Well how cool this is showing up on and audio discussion forum! Thanks for the nice plug for my book Regmac and it sounds like you enjoyed the material. I am also an OCD audiophile - Marsh and Emotiva pre and power, highly modded Bohlender-Graebner with modded Hsu subs, Fountek ribbon super-tweeters and Emotive mono-blocks, Njoe Tjube CD. What a wonderful pursuit!
Glad to do it, Tim. I've been passionate about wine for 40 years and i'm in the wine business (retail). A customer gave me your book as a gift and it has changed my perspective about wine. I also enjoyed your notion that the 100 point rating scale popularized by Parker and WS is really a 50 point scale. Everyone should read that chapter and take it to heart.
I've always thought a good review should lead our readers to AUDITION said piece of gear and see if they liked it either for the same reasons we did, or at least heard the same nuances, nothing more. Of course, you should trust your ears.
It's so disappointing when people think that we are all trying to brainwash them into buying gear they don't need, so we can be compensated by the evil manufacturers for doing so. I don't feel anyone should buy anything based on a review, I never have. But in the 80s and 90s before I started TONE, Stereophile and TAS certainly led me to a lot of great gear. Some I bought, some I didn't. But it was always really cool when I auditioned a piece of gear with some of the music they used in the review and heard similar nuances.
I'm always pleased when we get emails from our readers that have had the same experience. If we've helped lead you to a component that helps you enjoy your music collection more than you did before, then I feel that we've done our job.
Publisher, TONEAudio Magazine
And the system...
With one exception, where more expensive older whiskey of the same brand was definitely better (more complex) than younger one, I did not find ANY relation between price and quality.Of course, personal preferences play huge role, and someone else wouldn't rate stuff sourced from Lawrenceburg, IN - with its strong grassy taste, which I rather like - as high as I did.
Examples:
- High West Double Rye - $30 - very good;
- High West Rendezvous Rye - $48 - exceptional;
- Whistlepig - $60 - mediocre;
- George Dickel and Bulleit - both $25 - both good;
- Rittenhouse - $25 - very good;
- Ravenswood - $40 - DISGUSTING GARBAGE;
- Smooth Ambler - $35 - good.
Edits: 04/15/14
I'm more a Scotch person and don't buy much Bourbon . But I'm from Pennsylvania and I heard about the Michter distillery and that there would be no more beyond what was in the barrels and bottles. So when I found some a decade ago I bought 3 bottles of 16 year old and one 20 year old - good stuff, elegant almost like a great cognac but more soul.
It was an OK-to-good whiskey, main issue being oak overpowering every other subtle taste. Nowhere close to its price of $40 a bottle, considering alternatives that are available at $25-30.
Agree with the assessments of Whistlepig, Bulleit and Rittenhouse. Builleit Rye is a particularly good value. Look into Eagle Rare- another good value Bourbon.
Do not care for Michters at all.
Best,
Ross
... I decided to scratch them all from my shopping list.
Seems like Whistlepig is one of the best examples of what's available - and that means I'm not interested.
...also with white wine and a little added red color, tasters use red wine descriptors; i.e. they can't tell the difference.
I recall a TV show where a 2nd growth producer in France asked who were the 5 most important wine critics in the US were. He said Robert Parker and the other 4 don't matter.
...I suspect that is true, especially for France.
But even here winemakers changed to a big, fruit forward, high alcohol blockbuster wines to please him.
Glad to see he is not the force he once was (he's retiring) and we can get back to more subtle, layered and interesting wines with less than 15% alcohol.
When it comes to wine cartoons that is my all-time fave.
...we have wine humor appreciation in common ;->
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