the thing that “oh people can’t distinguish good wine from bad” discourse feels like it’s missing to me is that it’s making this materialist assumption that taste should be an entirely chemical phenomenon. but all food is drugs and as drugs they are sensitive to set and setting
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food literally tastes different depending on the context in which you eat it and the meaning you make about it and that’s a feature not a bug. eating food can be a magical practice. you are literally connecting to the process that keeps you alive and builds your body
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the production and consumption of extremely fancy wine is likewise also a magical practice. the product that is being bought and sold is the experience of luxury; that’s a particular kind of spell that some people want to be able to cast on themselves and others
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nice
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People who say this proves wine industry is a scam miss the point. This only shows how beliefs, perception and expectations shape our experience.
If you believe expensive wine will taste better, it will for you. If you believe it will disappoint you… guess what will happen. twitter.com/hamandcheese/s…
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welp more fool i for not even double-checking the original claim, h/t . learning a lot here on twitter dot com
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It is not true that wine tasters can't distinguish between low and high quality wines.
A few minutes on Google Scholar will show that in blind tastings interrater wine score correlations are sizable and positive.
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I mean. Agreed but surely the experience can be achieved while spending significantly less in the wine itself? Feel like im missing something here
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spending a lot of money is part of what makes the magic work. it's a ritual sacrifice. you'd have a different experience if you didn't spend the money
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The conceptual boundaries between food and drugs are way looser than their standard usage suggests imo. Is tea a drug? What about chocolate? Even nutmeg is apparently psychoactive in high doses
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As I’m cultivating my own tactile sensitivity, ability to feel tiiiny muscle holding patterns - I note that even “set and setting” are two-things-outside-ourselves
but like - food will taste kaleidoscopically diff to u after you’ve built 100x neural pathways of your taste, too
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what I mean is: wine tastes different not just when set and setting are different, but also when you’re different!
concept: wine tastings before and after a weeklong retreat to the forest
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wow after spending a week in a retreat setting, outdoors a lot - I come back home and I'm more sensitive to all smells.
more fine-tuned preference about which ones I do vs. don't want to inhale, & how they change me.
broadly nature, 'fresh air' vs. dust, must, & plastic scents
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