CWD: brown seeds are bullshit

originally posted by Steve Edmunds:
Intuition and blind luck, man. Read 'em and weep.
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I think the things you are intuiting can be measured. Not as precisely as your pattern recognition software does, but with potentially interesting results.

By the numbers, baby!!!!
 
The ground, and the vine, are alive. If you're not out there, relating to them in a personal, one-on-one way, they might not talk straight with you.
Roll me a number, wouldja? Aim low, get high!
 
I think the things you are intuiting can be measured. Not as precisely as your pattern recognition software does, but with potentially interesting results.
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So the only difference'd be more employment for statisticians?
 
For whatever reason I have had some luck with 2003 bordeaux from 'lesser' estates that do reasonably good vineyard work or whatever. Maybe the increased heat helped in vineyards that are relatively cool for the region, provided that the winemakers knew what they were doing? I don't have my notes handy here at work but I remember e.g. I preferred the 2003 Chateau Aney to their 2000 or 2005 and would buy it again. Not sure any of these are 'great' wines or that they will be all that long-lived but several have surprised me. As opposed to 2003 burgundy which, um, I'm like zero for eight now, with no inclination to try again.
 
originally posted by VLM:
Steve and VictorThe thing is, from a modeling standpoint, I don't think it would be too difficult. I mean you couldn't capture everything the human brain does with pattern recognition, but with a few simplifying assumptions it is tractable.

We are talking about a not terribly large covariance structure analysis, IMO.
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If you're talking about getting from here (terroir and viticultural practices) to there (the overall flavor of a particular wine), any model seems incredibly complex and daunting to me, with enormous covariance issues. Part of the problem is holding the production variables constant, but on top of that, once the wine is made you have the very difficult issues of threshold, interpretation and then interaction between all the different flavor constituents. It has been done for some specific compounds such as the pyrazines, but doing it for as nebulous a concept as ripeness vs. over-ripeness or "physiological maturity" seems daunting, IMHO. And yes, I agree this whole brown seeds thing smacks of bullshit.
 
originally posted by VLM:
originally posted by Steve Edmunds:Intuition and blind luck, man. Read 'em and weep.
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I think the things you are intuiting can be measured. Not as precisely as your pattern recognition software does, but with potentially interesting results.

By the numbers, baby!!!!
Click to expand...
In theory perhaps, but you under-estimate the amount of data you would need to collect, and the difficulty of data collection. Not to mention, are you going to under-write the project? Even then, like you imply, Robo-Steve still won't match Steve-the-man.

In my area, no one ever saw brown Pinot Noir pips until maybe three or four years ago. And most people still never will. Getting decent maturity in the pips and rachis, along with 22 or 23 brix, is a major achievement. There is no mistaking the difference.
 
I've never even tried to get brown pips in syrah or bobal or monastrell around here. By that time the potential alcohol would probably be 16.5% or something. We do try to munch on them to see if they begin to harden and lose part of the extreme herbaceousness. And we don't wait for the skins to wrinkle seriously, if we can - contrary to what I see some colleagues doing.
 
And we don't wait for the skins to wrinkle seriously, if we can - contrary to what I see some colleagues doing.
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Wow. I usually have argues with my harvesters because I force them to sort the wrinkled grapes out. Things have loosened up a bit since last year as we collect the dried grapes and make a passito. Now everyone is happy...

We usually do extensive munching too and look particularly close at pH development. In our region sugar levels become an issue only if they start reaching an upper threashold.
 
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