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Comment by barrkel | Hacker News Reader

Wines also taste completely different from one another. E.g. taste a vin jaune, a vin doux naturel, an eiswein, an orange wine - you'd never mistake any of these for one of the others, and none of them for any normal red or white off a restaurant wine list.

Similarly, it's hard to mistake an aged Burgundy for a Cote Rotie, or a Sauvignon Blanc for a Reisling.

Wine stores without Enomatic machines or equivalent are a mostly waste of time, IMO, unless you already know the maker's style and it's what you're looking for; or the owner has excellent taste. Dispensers give you the ability to taste a dozen or two wines with ease in a single evening.

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I don't think the variety in flavor is as obvious in wine as in beer. For someone with practice, the difference (and ability to describe the difference) between a Sauvingon Blanc and Chardonnay isn't difficult. I think anyone off the street can taste the difference between a chocolate stout, a hefeweizen and a pale lager.

Sometimes I think wine could be dumbed down. My best example: Sauv Blanc tastes like grass and bell pepper. Is that universal? No. Does that capture every subtlety? No. But it is the defining characteristic.

Try a Sauternes against a sauvignon blanc and you may change your mind.

> the difference (and ability to describe the difference) between a Sauvingon Blanc and Chardonnay isn't difficult. I think anyone off the street can taste the difference between a chocolate stout, a hefeweizen and a pale lager.

I'd like to observe that when you wanted to claim that wines were indistinguishable, you picked two wines that were quite similar. When you wanted to claim beers were distinguishable, you picked chocolate stout vs hefeweizen, which is clearly not the same sort of example.

I don't know what I don't know. I guess what I'm saying is, to the non-discerning wine drinker, there is red and white. Perhaps sweet vs. dry in there. It is much more difficult to taste the "dark fruit" and "light fruit" differences in particular reds than it is to taste the presence of certain overpowering notes in almost every beer. Wine is more subtle.

With beer, everything except pale lager tends to have a distinct flavor of some kind, that can be named easily. Chocolate, wheat, fruit, corn (Keystone), etc.

You have quite a lot of opinions on a topic which you admittedly don't know.

I was actually trying to be polite and humble, since I've tasted at least 700 distinct beers and probably about 80 wines. I do have my opinions, and the servers in any decent establishment will not insult the person who likes a drink "because it tastes good".

You have quite an offputting smugness, triggered by such a light and otherwise friendly discussion.

And you have quite an offputting ignorance, which you show no qualms about putting on display for everybody to see.

Seriously? Comparing sauvignon blanc and chardonnay to a chocolate stout and a pale lager? Are you intentionally trying to be disingenuous?

Well, forgive me for being smug to someone that deserves it.

> For someone with practice, the difference (and ability to describe the difference) between a Sauvingon Blanc and Chardonnay isn't difficult.

For someone with practice (and not a lot of practice), the difference between different wines made from the same grape isn't difficult. A "typical" Australian Chardonnay tastes buttery, while a Chablis is like sucking flint. And years ago I had a Texan Chardonnay that stank like rotting cabbages, yet tasted ... well, more or less the same, but in a good way.

> I don't think the variety in flavor is as obvious in wine as in beer.

Try a red Bordeaux then a red Cahors.

> Wines also taste completely different from one another. E.g. taste a vin jaune, a vin doux naturel, an eiswein, an orange wine - you'd never mistake any of these for one of the others, and none of them for any normal red or white off a restaurant wine list.

Sure, but I won't find any of those in my local supermarket, and even at an actual wine merchants they'll probably be tucked away in the corner at best. Most of the shelves will be taken up with a bunch of very similar reds and a bunch of very similar whites, categorised primarily by country of origin which I'm pretty sure the person in the street would struggle to taste. Whereas the beer aisle will probably have at least sections for lagers, IPAs, session ales/saisons, stouts/porters, maybe fruit beers...

I think that says more about supermarkets and their choice of selection than it does about wines in general.

It's fair to judge "the wine industry", which was the grandparent's original phrasing, by what I experience when buying wine as a consumer. (It's not like it's just supermarkets - in a typical restaurant it will be the same thing).

> Wine stores without Enomatic machines or equivalent

Well they are clever, but traditional merchants in the UK always have open bottles to taste from, but also offer tasting events where you can be taught by an expert, or even the winemaker themselves. A lot more fun than the machines I think!

Tasting events are cool, but they often have a commercial edge, focusing on a particular distributor. You also need to make time for them - you can't just turn up any evening on your own demand.

If you're in London, I recommend Vagabond Wines. Not only do they have a good selection in tasting machines rotated frequently, they also do tasting evenings. I've been going to the Fulham branch for years, but they've expanded.

Hedonism Wines is also a mandatory visit, of course.

Turn the clock back a hundred years and try some of these other merchants.

http://www.bunchwines.co.uk/

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