Category:Wine trends

Are machine-written wine reviews closer than ever?

by Wine Curmudgeon Posted On

AI wine reviews
“Come on, already. What’s taking so long? It’s only a bunch of crummy chardonnay reviews.”

Dartmouth researcher: “We couldn’t tell them apart from human reviews”

A group of Dartmouth researchers have apparently taken the next step in machine-written wine reviews. Their study, published earlier this year in the International Journal of Research in Marketing, takes the work we’ve seen with artificial intelligence and brings it to a terrifying new place: The results “show strong support for the assertion that machines can write reviews that are indistinguishable from those written by experts.”

Keith Carlson, a doctoral research fellow at Dartmouth’s Tuck School of Business, didn’t say that the algorithm he and four others developed would show up as part of Wine Spectator tasting notes anytime soon. Some work still needs to be done, including further research into how similar the machine reviews are to human reviews.

Which is what I noticed: The examples were close, but not quite there – one machine rose review mentioned vanilla, which isn’t all that common in rose.

Still, Carlson told me, advancements in machine neural networks allowed the group to apparently come closer than anyone has before in making AI-generated wine reviews practical. Their algorithm used thousands of tasting notes from wine magazines to come up with a way that a machine could “teach” itself to write reviews.

Take that as you will. Regular readers will know how I feel. Wine has enough problems without some marketing guru — or, even worse, some media type – using AI reviews to flog product on the cheap. If this is practical, I can see AI reviews trolling sites like Vivino and Cellar Tracker, making consumers think the wines are more popular than they are – or taste a certain way when they may not.

That the study was published in a marketing journal is especially bothersome, as if the only use for technology is to sell stuff. And the Dartmouth news release even used the word “disrupt,” which is tech speak for “this will make us a gazillion dollars and aren’t we smarter than everyone else.”

Carlson emphasized that the last thing the group wants is for AI reviews to replace people. Rather, he says, they can be used to make wine reviewing easier, as a starting point for human reviewers. Perhaps. But I don’t know that the machine’s cabernet sauvignon review – dry, with blackberry fruit – is going to tell me anything new about cabernet.

But what do I know? I’m not out to disrupt anything.

More about AI wine reviews:
• “Crisp and fresh:” AI wine writing strikes again
• Artificial intelligence and wine recommendations
• AI wine writing: Maybe it’s not around the corner after all

Encork: A better way to close an open wine bottle?

by Wine Curmudgeon Posted On

encorkThe Encork stopper seems to keep wine fresh after the bottle has been opened

Tyler Rice may be on to something, and he used an apple to do it.

Rice is one of the people behind a wine closure called Encork. It aims to fill the void between the ultra-pricey Coravin and the more simple and less expensive Vacu Vin-style systems, which are used to close open bottles of wine and to keep the wine from oxidizing. No pumping is required and Encork doesn’t need pricey accessories like argon capsules or replacement needles.

Instead, it’s a plastic stopper with a tab on the part that goes into the bottle. Remove the tab, insert the stopper, and a compound on the bottom of the stopper is supposed to absorb the oxygen in the open bottle and slow oxidation.

Which is where the apple comes in.

Oxidation in wine works the same way it does with an apple. Cut an apple, expose the flesh, and it turns brown; the same thing happens to wine (you can sometimes see the browning in white wine). Wine also picks up an almost brandy-ish taste. When Rice and his colleagues tested the Encork compound, they put an apple core in a wine bottle. If Encork didn’t work, the core would turn brown.

It didn’t.

“There was a lot of skepticism about whether this would work,” says Rice, “and there has been a very positive reaction that it works as well as it does.”

Which it does seem to do. I can’t vouch for the 99 percent oxygen removal that the brand claims, but it worked when I used the sample Rice sent me. I closed a variety of crummy sample wines with Encork, leaving each bottle about half full. My thinking? That well-made wine can hold out for several days without oxidizing because it is well made; poorly-made wines, like the samples, should oxidize almost immediately.

But none of them did, and each tasted remarkably the same the next day. In fact, one rose – slightly sweet and a bit tannic – was still slightly sweet and a bit tannic when I opened it 24 hours later.

A box of 12 Encork stoppers costs $30, or $2.50 each, and can only be used once to prevent oxidation (though it’s a perfectly fine stopper if all you want to do is close an open bottle). The price makes the product better suited for wine costing more than $15, and I can see the Big Guy using it for his $18 red Bordeauxs.

Regardless, it’s much easier to use than the Vacu Vin (which I use) and certainly more affordable than the Coravin, Who knew an apple core would pay off like that?

“Prohibition wasn’t a failure”

by Wine Curmudgeon Posted On

al capone
“Of course Prohibition was a success — I made millions.”

The neo-Prohibitionists are reframing history to convince us that Prohibition worked – so we can do it again

“For instance, the St. Valentine’s Day massacre, in which seven men were gunned down in a Chicago garage, may have been carried out to avenge an earlier killing and had no connection to Capone or to bootlegging.”

— Bill of Rights Institute

Welcome to the Alice in Wonderland inhabited by the neo-Prohibitionists in their attempt to convince us that Prohibition was a success and that we should – and can – do it again.

How anyone can argue that the Valentine’s Day Massacre had nothing do with bootlegging and illegal liquor is past astounding. It’s a rejection of almost 100 years of historical analysis – Al Capone and Dion O’Banion fought for control of the Chicago liquor business, and Capone won by murdering as many of O’Banion’s gang as possible (including O’Banion). The seven murders on Feb. 14, 1929, finished the job.

It’s also worth noting that Capone thought the 1932 film “Scarface” was about him, wrote screenwriter Ben Hecht. Any why not? Hecht’s script revolves around Italian gangster Tony Camonte, who blows away his Irish North Side enemies in a St. Valentine’s Day-style massacre.

Yet search Google for “Prohibition was a success” and the results are mind-boggling — a mix of facts and wishful thinking. Which, come to think of it, is not all that different from the infamous cigarette study: Drinking one bottle of wine a week is the equivalent of smoking 10 cigarettes a week for women and five cigarettes for men.

So consider this, from a couple of studies in Scotland that looked at the results of alcohol minimum pricing. The idea was that raising the price of booze would cut crime, reduce drinking, and improve the public health. None of which seems to have happened.

Of course, the Iranians could have told the Scots that would be the case. Who knew AA would be so popular in Iran, a country where alcohol is illegal?

The Julia Child renaissance

by Wine Curmudgeon Posted On

Pop culture – which means younger people – has re-discovered Child’s greatness


Julia Child’s contribution to wine has long been appreciated on the blog. It took the courage of her convictions to advocate for California labels in those long ago days before the Fighting Varietals, when opening a bottle of American-made chablis or something called mountain red was not to be taken lightly.

So imagine my surprise — and joy – to learn that young people have taken to Child, and that social media is atwitter with praise for her accomplishments. It’s one thing to appreciate what Child did to change the way we eat, cook, and drink wine if you’re old enough to have watched “The French Chef” with your mother. It’s another if all you know is an exhibit in a museum.

But there it is. A new documentary. A new HBO series. There’s even a TikTok channel.

“The real Child, in my time with her, she certainly struck me as suffering absolutely no fools, and she was whip smart and even sharp-tongued,” says Doug Frost, MS, MW, who worked with Child at the American Institute of Wine & Food, which she helped start. “She was an admirable person, don’t get me wrong. But there was no room for foolishness in her world. I thought her to be canny and shrewd; she could be charming, sure, but she knew what she wanted at any given time. You did not screw around with Julia Child.”

Which, come to think of it, is a fine role model for young people and especially young women — and one that, sadly, is still not common enough in today’s world.

Child was someone who came to American food when it was mostly women’s magazine recipes that used canned cream of mushroom soup, and she taught us about fresh ingredients and that there was something other for dinner besides beef, a baked potato, and an iceberg lettuce salad with rubber tomatoes. Perhaps most importantly, she tried to teach us we didn’t need to fear wine or food – a lesson too many of us, even in the wine and food business, still haven’t learned.

In addition, she crashed into the male-dominated world of both professional cooking and TV in a way no one had ever quite seen before. Can you imagine a 6-2 woman with that hair being a media star today?

So bring it on, young people, and pay attention to what Child has to say about wine and its place in our food and culture. And then watch the video at the top of the post, where Child puts one over on David Letterman (with maybe a twinkle in her eye, and maybe not). How often did anyone else do that?

Rose season 2022 preview

by Wine Curmudgeon Posted On

rose 2022
“The WC is right — where are all those $10 roses?”

This year should be better than last, but still expect higher prices and supply snafus

Two years of pandemic-related supply shortages should ease a little as we approach the start of 2022’s rose season. The blog’s 15th annual rose post will run on May 26 to mark the occasion.

Which is the good news. The bad news? Expect to pay more for your favorite pink wine – not a lot more, but just enough to notice the price increase.

I talked to a variety of retailers and importers over the past couple of weeks, and that was pretty much the consensus. Among their thoughts:

• Shipping remains an issue. One rose sample, which I always get around the beginning of April, won’t ship until the end of this month. “It’s still definitely not normal,” says Charles Bieler, whose roses include blog favorites Charles & Charles from Washington state and the French Bieler et Fils Sabine,

• Most of what we do get will arrive over the next couple of months, and that will be that, says Todd Nelson, vice president of marketing and PR for importer Winesellers, Ltd., which handles France’s Mont Gravet, another blog favorite. “When the brands are sold out, they’ll be sold out,” he emailed me. “Fewer brands will bring in late arrivals.”

• Prices will be higher, said almost everyone — $10 wines up to $12, $12 wines up to $14, and so forth. Interestingly, says Nelson, roses costing $20 and more haven’t fared as well over the past couple of years, and it looks like producers won’t make as many at those prices.

• Why higher prices? Inflation, certainly, as well as glass and cardboard shortages (used for wine boxes). There’s also a sense, one California producer said, that demand has increased for cheaper grapes from high-end producers, who are trying to cut costs. Which, ironically, means higher prices for $10 wines, since that raises the price of the cheaper grapes used to make those wines.

What do the neo-Prohibitionists want?

by Wine Curmudgeon Posted On

wine and health
This is the WC’s favorite “we’re all drunk and passed out because all drinking is evil” picture.

Yes, they want us to stop drinking, but is there more going on than that?

Consider the following, which a fellow wine writer received after a recent column:

“There’s no appropriate level of alcohol consumption given that even an infrequent glass of wine or beer will spike cancer and more than an infrequent glass will do lasting liver and brain damage. Fortunately, consumption is falling in America & the best thing would be for it to fall further, faster.”

Hard to read, yes? The absolutes. The certainty. The righteousness. But read it, and know that’s where we are when it comes to alcohol in the the U.S. As a blog reader noted in a comment the other day: “An otherwise trenchant writer in my field (psychotherapy) told his readers that anyone who drinks more than a glass of wine at Christmas dinner is an alcoholic.”

The neo-Prohibitionists have taken control of the discussion, and until the wine business – and its colleagues in beer and spirits – take it back, we’re going to see more and more of this. And yes, it could come to the point where – as one very smart wine writer told me not long ago – drinking will be as much anathema as cigarette smoking.

The irony is that Prohibition was perhaps the greatest social failure in U.S. history. Which, of course, doesn’t matter to the neo-Prohibitionists because they know absolutely and certainly of their righteousness. History won’t dare repeat itself with them.

Frankly, I don’t understand why so many in the wine business are so terrified to call out the neo-Prohibitionists. What are they going to do? Cast a spell and turn everyone into frogs?

Because there are reasons to call them out. A German nutritionist, reported a British trade magazine, said that those of us who drink in moderation are being “stigmatised” by flawed alcohol studies. Nicolai Worm, PhD (who also consults for wine trade groups) was especially critical of research used to show that any alcohol consumption was evil.

Hmm. Think we’ll see that in the mainstream news media? I doubt it.

Also note that I mentioned Worm consults for wine trade groups. This is called being objective, which is something that every peer-reviewed scientific study should aspire to and so few seem to care about these days.

So turn me into a frog if you want. I’ll continue to drink in moderation; walk Churro, the blog’s associate editor, every morning; watch how many eggs and how much red meat I eat; avoid fried foods; and fill out my diet with grains, beans, and vegetables. Which seems like a damned healthy lifestyle, yes?

More about wine and health:
• Once more, how not to report a wine and health story
• One more reason to be wary of alcohol health studies
• Health alert! Does the CDC know how dangerous Starbucks’ pumpkin spice latte is?

Winecast 67: Felicity Carter on what wine drinkers want

by Wine Curmudgeon Posted On

felcity carter
Felicity Carter: “There will be a lot wine on the shelves, but where it will come from is whatever buyers can get their hands on.”

Felicity Carter: We don’t know what’s going to happen next in wine — “all is in chaos.”

Felicity Carter is the former editor of Meininger’s Wine Business International, one of the industry’s leading trades, and is currently the executive editor of the The Drop, a consumer wine newsletter. Which means she probably knows more about the wine business than many of the so-called experts. (And, in the interest of transparency, I have written for her at both sites.)

One example of how Felicity sees things others don’t: Her take on consumer wine trends. Two decades ago, Yellow Tail’s slightly sweet red wines were all the rage. Today, the trendy wine style is the slightly sweet red blend. In other words, the same wine in different packaging.

We talked about a variety of consumer wine trends and even got in a shot at wine writers. The podcast, which is about 13 minutes long and takes up 9 megabytes — download or stream it here (and ignore what seems to be me shouting):

• Consumers seem to be split into two groups. Some of us are looking for more interesting wines, as well as sustainable and natural wines (which makes this the longest natural wine discussion in blog history). Others, meanwhile, still want cabernet sauvignon, rose, and sparkling wine. In addition, low alcohol and “healthy wine” seems to be gaining attention.

• Climate change is starting to affect wine production, so how and where we get the wines we want is becoming more difficult to figure out.

• Most foreign producers want to sell their wine in the U.S. which help fill shelves here. Why do they want that? Because we’re willing to pay higher prices than everyone else.

• Many of the wine trends we hear about come from wine writers trying to impress and aren’t necessarily actual trends. When’s the last time any of us had a blaufrankisch?

• And shiraz is pronounced, “sheer-azz” Down Under.