Winebits 758: Hot weather, alcohol-free wine, AI wine writing

This week’s wine news: Hot weather is cooking wine shipments, plus questions about alcohol-free wine and AI wine writing

• Hot, hot, hot: The temperature in Dallas has been above 100 for nine days in a row, including 106 on Friday and 105 on Saturday. I mention this not to elicit sympathy (it still beats shoveling snow), but to remind everyone to be careful when shipping wine at temperatures like this. A sample arrived last week broken and leaking; as near as I could tell, the bottle just sort of exploded because of the heat. This is not common, but not uncommon, either, as I wrote in a freelance piece for Pix.wine. Excessive heat can pop the cork and cause leakage, and it can even cook the wine, making it taste like bad fortified wine.

• Calling out alcohol-fre: Huon Hooke, writing in Australia’s Brisbane Times, wants to know” “Is alcohol-free wine even wine?” Writes Hooke: “Is a sausage without meat still a sausage? Is a tarte tatin without apples still a tarte tatin?” The piece is well worth reading, delving into the metaphysical questions involved here. How can wine, which is made with alcohol, still be wine without it? In this, he writes, “There’s a place for these drinks. It’s just not my place.” I can’t say I disagree; if I don’t want alcohol, I’ll drink iced tea.

• Figuring out AI? David Beck, writing in Food & Beverage Analytics, asks: Why are wine critics afraid of artificial intelligence and wine writing? I was going to write a terrific, standalone rant on the blog answering this question, especially since the article criticized some of my — dare I say — top-notch writing about wine and artificial intelligence. But Beck’s piece didn’t make much sense. It was poorly written, jumbled, and disjointed, and even his criticism of me missed the point. AI wine writing isn’t here to make human life easier, but to make more money for surveillance capitalism. So let’s mention it here, and then we can forget about it. Right, Drinky?