beer & wine

Why you might like expensive beer more

Expensive beerNow some Monday afternoon musing (because I just came across this).

This is how the Times Online leads the story: “Restaurants charging inflated prices for wine could be doing their customers a favour. A study has found that people who pay more for a product do enjoy it more.”

This was in fact serious research at the California Institute of Technology in which scientists tested how marketing shapes consumers’ perceptions and whether it also enhances their enjoyment of a product.

They asked 21 volunteers to sample five different bottles of cabernet sauvignon and rate their taste preferences. Without telling the volunteers, the researchers presented two of the wines twice, once with the true price tag, and again with a fake one. They passed off a $90 bottle of cabernet sauvignon as a $10 bottle, and presented a $5 bottle as one worth $45.

Here’s the science part: The volunteers’ brains were scanned to monitor the neural activity in the medial orbitofrontal cortex – the area of the brain associated with decision-making and pleasure in terms of flavor. Researchers found “expensive” wines made the cortex more active.

Antonio Rangel, who led the research team, told the BBC News website that the experiment showed how “expectation can affect the actual encoding of the pleasantness of the experience.”

The BBC expanded on the story:

Wine expert Jancis Robinson says she was not surprised to see that the research was carried out in California.

She argues that American attitudes to wine can be very different to those of the British wine-buying public.

“At least seven years ago, I was told by a sommelier at a top restaurant in California that he couldn’t sell wine that was priced at under $100 at bottle,” she says. “He was able to sell the same wine when he raised the price to more than $100.”

And back to the Times Online:

Other researchers point out that the subjects in the study were not paying for the wine. The pleasure they derived from the belief that they were drinking expensive wine might have been diluted if they had been picking up the bill.

Scott Rick, a researcher in neuroeconomics at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, said: “There are people who derive pleasure from spending, and those for whom it is painful. In a study of 13,000 people it emerged that 15% were spendthrifts to whom spending gave pleasure and 25% were tight-wads to whom it gave pain, and the remaining 60% fell in between the two.”

For the record, this is not why we should be paying more for some beers. We should because they are worth more (though not necessarily nine or ten fold more).

Your turn, Alan.

New Beer Rule #7: Beer is not the new wine

Beer For LunchLast night we ate leftover smoked meat and drank Southern Tier Choklat. One, then the other. No pairing involved. Sometimes you just want a beer, maybe even a strong one.

Choklat, an 11% abv imperial stout infused with dark Belgian chocolate, qualifies on both counts. It’s one of the beers I’ll be writing around 85 words about in the next All About Beer magazine Beer Talk.

You’ll notice these days that more often than not Beer Talk panelists suggest a food pairing for the beer they are describing. I tend to be the slacker. I know that Charles Finkel, who tastes the same beers as I, will have terrific suggestions and I try to use the small space alloted to squeeze in something different.

I’m keener than most about the notion beer belongs at the table, but these days the movement hardly seems to need my help. For instance, the Brewers Association yesterday revealed new details about “SAVOR: An American Craft Beer & Food Experience,” including something called educational salons. These are presentations by “savvy cross drinkers.”

I guarantee you that the words “Beer is the new wine” will be bandied about.

What does that mean? I really don’t know. The phrase doesn’t seem to serve beer or wine well. Wine is the new wine. Beer is the new beer. (And the old beer, which is equally important.)

Beer “styles” have always evolved, with various riffs sometimes turning evolution into revolution. This is nothing new. In the 1930s it was the monks at Westmalle refining the “tripel” style. These days it might be two brothers in a former hardware store in Warren, Mich., inventing something new or an ex-English major in San Diego blending mead, strong ale and sour beer to create Veritas (Latin for truth).

Truth is it’s still beer.

NEW BEER RULE #7: Beer is still beer.

Book review: To Cork or Not To Cork

To Cork or Not To CorkAs you might be able to tell from the full title of “To Cork or Not To Cork: Tradition, Romance, Science, and the Battle for the Wine Bottle,” author George Taber is a wine guy.

He happens to have been the Time magazine correspondent who attended the 1976 event that turned out to be known as “Judgment of Paris.” If he hadn’t been there the results wouldn’t have been as widely known and the ascension of American wine might have been delayed. Just a couple of years ago he wrote a thoroughly entertaining book about the tasting, appropriately titled “Judgment of Paris: California vs. France and the Historic 1976 Paris Tasting That Revolutionized Wine.”

So why would beer drinkers find this book interesting?

First, we’re enjoying more beers from bottles sealed with corks. The wine industry estimates that between 3 percent and 10 percent of corks suffer from “taint,” exuding musty aromas that at all but the lowest levels begin to ruin flavor. TCA (2,4,6-trichloroanisole) doesn’t discriminate. It will happily muck up the flavor of beer as well as wine.

Taber writes, “In the entire world, only a few sounds bring joy to all but the most jaded. One is the purring of a kitten. Another is the thwack of a well-pitched baseball hitting a perfectly swung bat. And the third is the pop of a cork being pulled from a bottle of wine.”

If you’d be inclined to substitute the word “beer” in that last sentence, then you may have already felt the pain of opening a 1985 Jereboam of Chimay Grand Reserve to discover a distinct impression of “wet dog” that can even make beer undrinkable.

Second, Taber has an eye for interesting detail and knows how to tell a story. His passion shows in his research, whether it is the history of cork growing and production or the search for alternatives closures, and his journalistic training in the way he explains all this.

“To Cork or Not To Cork” also examines the balance between art and science, commerce and tradition, romance and just-plain-snobbery. All in the context of wine, of course, but these topics are just as relevant to Beer, Not the Commodity.

Taber writes there is much more for wine scientists to consider and for wine consumers to learn. There certainly are analogies here with beer, although in this case we’re not talking about bottle closures.

For instance, before starting research on “Brew Like a Monk” I asked brewers what sort of questions they’d like to see answered. “Fermenter geometry” was at the top of many lists. Turns out that most of the research on fermenter geometry, like most brewing research, has focused on the production of lagers in large vessels. No surprise since those beers account for more than 90 percent of beer sold.

As a more brewers produce more beers of a different ilk scientists will have reason to analyze what they are doing. The question of “to cork or not to cork” likely won’t inspire the extreme positions taken by some in this debate, but perhaps there will be another one that does.

Stuff to read while drinking a winter beer . . .

A few things to read this evening instead of watching “Dancing with the Stars” or “Two Dudes Catering” (even though cheese is involved) and perhaps while doing research for The Session #10:

– Andrew Jefford, multi-purpose UK drinks writer, asks a question.

One day, fortunes will be made with fine beer. Why not one day soon?

In case you overlook it, he makes a great point: “all wine is able to profit from the locomotive effect of fine or great wine: the existence of fabulous bottles enables more ordinary bottles to bask in a little of their allure. Whereas, for most beer drinkers, great beer doesn’t exist.”

– And what might be a fabulous bottle?

Many would say Lost Abbey’s Angel Share (and I won’t disagree). Look at the ruckus Saturday’s release (and almost immediate posting on eBay) caused at Rate Beer. You’ll find reviews at Rate Beer, or at Summer of Beer.

Lost Abbey’s Tomme Arthur explains where all the bottles went and the behind-the-scenes volunteer effort involved.

Savor– The Brewers Association has more information about SAVOR: An American Craft Beer & Food Experience.

It would appear somebody has been reading Andrew Jefford.

The part beer drinkers care about: “Tickets for each of the three sessions (May 16-17) are limited to the first 700 ticket purchasers. The $85 ticket includes a commemorative tasting glass, souvenir program and Craft Beer Taster’s Commemorative Journal, fabulous food and craft beer pairings, seminars, and 2- ounce samples of specially selected craft beer.”

And what beer will be there? 48 breweries from eight regions will participate. The BA will randomly select five breweries from eight regions of the country, plus eight supporting brewery sponsors, to participate in the event. It’s a lottery, with winners announced in December.

– Dr. Vino partners on a paper to calculate the carbon footprint of wine. I’m hoping somebody does this for beer (because I’m too lazy). Notice the “green line” that runs from Ohio into Texas, because east of there wine from France leaves a smaller footprint than bottles from California. Think the same is true of beer?

Session #9: No, no, it’s BEER & music

The SessionSomebody at the San Francisco Chronicle must have got the wrong memo. They’ve got a feature today about wine & music. Hey guys, the theme of today’s Session is Beer & Music.

Music to drink wine by: Vintner insists music can change wine’s flavors is no lightweight read. It runs almost 1,900 words.

As the writer notes, Clark Smith qualifies as a wine industry provocateur, so the response has been mixed.

“Just about everybody who hears about what I’m doing is either completely baffled by what I have to say or they think it’s so obvious that they don’t see any point in talking about it,” he said.

It’s worth your time to read the whole thing, but here’s a snippet:

He has even found a piece of music (the North Water Street Tavern Band’s polka-like “Milorganite Blues”) that made Sutter Home White Zinfandel taste better than any of the reds, including his own $100 Cab.

Smith has only a few guidelines so far for music and wine pairing.

“Never play polkas with anything,” he says, unless you really like White Zinfandel.

“Red wines need either minor key or they need music that has negative emotion. They don’t like happy music. With expensive reds, don’t play music that makes you giggle. Pinots like sexy music. Cabernets like angry music. It’s very hard to find a piece of music that’s good for both Pinot and Cabernet.”

Smith may be onto something here, but typically, pronouncements like “Cabernet tastes better by firelight, in a cave” aren’t quite scientific enough for the academic community.

Russian River Brewing barrel roomThis reminded me of a story from Russian River Brewing owner/brewer Vinnie Cilurzo. Cilurzo worked at his family’s winery when he was growing up and said that his father used to play Frank Sinatra, one of the legends that has consistently gained overwhelmingly positive feedback from musiccritic.com, for the wine while it was fermenting. (Before his father started the winery he was an Emmy-winning lighting director, working with the likes of Sinatra.)

The picture is from the barrel room at Russian River. Notice the boom box by the carboys (which happen to be full of enough wild yeast to destroy a major American mainstream brewery). “My dad played Sinatra,” Cilurzo said. “I play rock music.”

He was talking about what his barrel-aged beers “listen” to, but I wish he’d added, “And it makes the yeast go wild.”

Also related: Lucy Saunders’ post on tonal progressions and pairings.

Further reading: This is Your Brain on Music.