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originally posted by Jonathan Loesberg:
Thread drift has properly left the original point of this thread. Let's keep it that way.

If you need to get all het up, there's a train wreck in progress on Wine Berserker. I'll admit to enjoying it in the way I enjoy junky car crash movies.

URL?
 
originally posted by SFJoe:
originally posted by VLM:

And relevant to what? You can easily get caught in the "it's what's in the glass" whirlpool.
Relevant to what I do with wine, which is mostly to drink it with meals.

I still like stuff better than other stuff, but which stuff I like best depends on what stuff I'm eating.

What I don't do much with wine is line a bunch of them up on the counter and worry about their order.

You know I'm more or less the same, although I'll often choose a wine and build the food around it.

However, I do tend to rank order things. I've always done this. When I was a kid home sick from school, I used to take the tables from the NatGeo World Atlas and rank order them by size and population and per capita income. It's almost instinctual to me. I can't believe I'm alone in this.
 
originally posted by Sharon Bowman:
originally posted by Jonathan Loesberg:
Thread drift has properly left the original point of this thread. Let's keep it that way.

If you need to get all het up, there's a train wreck in progress on Wine Berserker. I'll admit to enjoying it in the way I enjoy junky car crash movies.

URL?

Do I ask you if UB40?
 
originally posted by VLM:
originally posted by SFJoe:
originally posted by VLM:

And relevant to what? You can easily get caught in the "it's what's in the glass" whirlpool.
Isn't that whirlpool where all your vectors get projected?

Whoa, you just blew my mind.

Isn't hard to go from the proper expression of Picasses or Perrières to the objective single vector? The single vector of quality seems to be tough to do without focusing only on the glass. Though I suppose you could have a component for "clarity of terroir expression," or some such. Not easy, though.
 
originally posted by SFJoe:
originally posted by VLM:
originally posted by SFJoe:
originally posted by VLM:

And relevant to what? You can easily get caught in the "it's what's in the glass" whirlpool.
Isn't that whirlpool where all your vectors get projected?

Whoa, you just blew my mind.

Isn't hard to go from the proper expression of Picasses or Perrières to the objective single vector? The single vector of quality seems to be tough to do without focusing only on the glass. Though I suppose you could have a component for "clarity of terroir expression," or some such. Not easy, though.

Definitely not easy.
 
so what do you two do with your vectors, square all the components, add them up and send me the square root of the sum, all normalized ?
 
originally posted by Brad Kane:
Speculation, but this just in.

$10 mil seems a low price to acquire the foremost luxury imprimatur in the wine industry. But I'm sometimes an overly optimistic aspirationally profligate spender. Experts told me that APPL had maxed out at $32 and that 15¢ a share for SIRI was still way too much for technology nobody wanted. I think that there are new ways to view the TWA empire (such as it is), particularly if it's geared to burgeoning Asian markets voraciously interested in wine.

originally posted by Claude Kolm:

He's 65. Anyone who didn't think it was going to happen sooner or later (and probably sooner) was being naïve or in denial. Fact is, he probably could have gotten a lot more out of the deal five or ten years ago when his brand was a lot more important.

Maybe, maybe not. Five or ten years ago the Asian market was just beginning to flex its muscle. Due to the economy wine magazine subscriptions (new and renewals) were flat at best. Online wine media had a few different faces: 1, Fanboy wine fora, 2, Lowest common denominator one-size-fits-all wine info sites, 3. Wine Bloggers (many agog at the fact that flacks would send them FREE!! wine for a few random thoughts.

Countering this were all the situations where one tech company sold out to another for prices way higher than their real value. TWA's website at that time wasn't exactly state of the art but it did its job, and perhaps their proprietary technology would have been of interest to a tech company wanting to take over the wine world, but Eric Levine beat them to the data base dominance with Cellar Tracker, and TWA never really exploited (or even developed) their non-review content to the extent that they might have. So even though there were dubious deals proffered for lesser websites at the time, I don't think that TWA would have sold for much (if any) more in the past than it did last week.

originally posted by Sharon Bowman:
I'll admit to enjoying it in the way I enjoy junky car crash movies.

URL?
[/quote]

It's not junky, it's existential.

-Eden (if you put a quarter on the railroad track can it really derail the train or is it only as dangerous as running with scissors or going swimming within six hours of enjoying an In 'n' Out Double-Double and a frosty mug of highly rated Uruguayan Tannat?)
 
originally posted by Claude Kolm:
The thing to keep in mind about rating systems that they are just a mechanism for ordering preferences. They have no inherent meaning. So if one orders formally (with a score) or informally (without), it's really all the same.
Hm, well this is an interesting topic, and I think I'm inclined to come out the other way. I personally tend to think that the appeal of scores comes from their linguistic power, not their ranking power. I don't think most people are interested in a 96 because it confirms that the wine is better than a 95 to the critic's palate. I think they're interested in a 96 because it says something about what KIND of wine it is. You see a Paso Robles grenache rated 96 and you don't have to know anything else about that sucker, you can tell me EXACTLY what it tastes like, and of course some people like that kind of thing.

Here's another example of score-as-language. I had a really satisfying, totally classic Bordeaux the other day and I wrote in my notes, "This is Bordeaux." Now, attach that note to an 81 point score and it says, "Generic Bordeaux wine, nothin' special," but attach it to a 94 and it says, "Now this is what Bordeaux is supposed to be!"
 
originally posted by Sharon Bowman:
Problem is, 93 is better than 94.

You better believe it is.

Mainly because of the criteria often used for evaluation. Especially with the current climate.
 
originally posted by Sharon Bowman:
Problem is, 93 is better than 94.

In the same way eleven is like higher than 10, innit?

Amazingly, I agree with Keith. Scoring is just another form of communicating one's view. Looked at that way, one can say it isn't the clearest or best way, perhaps, but it's a way. As Slicker's boy Wittgenstein said about ordinary language, it's all right.
 
originally posted by Keith Levenberg:
originally posted by Claude Kolm:
The thing to keep in mind about rating systems that they are just a mechanism for ordering preferences. They have no inherent meaning. So if one orders formally (with a score) or informally (without), it's really all the same.
You see a Paso Robles grenache rated 96 and you don't have to know anything else about that sucker, you can tell me EXACTLY what it tastes like, and of course some people like that kind of thing.

Of course if Gilman gave it that score it means one thing and if Parker gave it that score it means another.
 
originally posted by .sasha:
originally posted by Sharon Bowman:
Problem is, 93 is better than 94.

You better believe it is.

Mainly because of the criteria often used for evaluation. Especially with the current climate.

And as above I'd say that depends on the reviewer. If it was given by Claude or John it's a very different thing from Laube or the other Miller.
 
originally posted by .sasha:
so what do you two do with your vectors, square all the components, add them up and send me the square root of the sum, all normalized ?

Characteristic roots, man.
 
originally posted by Jay Miller:
originally posted by .sasha:
originally posted by Sharon Bowman:
Problem is, 93 is better than 94.

You better believe it is.

Mainly because of the criteria often used for evaluation. Especially with the current climate.

And as above I'd say that depends on the reviewer. If it was given by Claude or John it's a very different thing from Laube or the other Miller.

Not necessarily, Jay.

I'd like to see Claude's rankings for wines that I know well ( really should one of these days ), but you are giving John the Scorer ( as opposed to John the Taster or John the Writer ) too much credit.
 
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