Today, I’m reaching out to the internet’s premier wine community for insights. My name is Jay Yoo, a student at the University of Pennsylvania, passionate about wine just like you! I am currently working on a project designed to connect each person’s daily likes and dislikes with their ideal wine. And we need your expert opinions!
How much can your feelings about everyday things like broccoli or public transportation predict your wine preferences? Help us find out by contributing to our project. It only takes two minutes, and you can start the survey here:
By participating and sharing your Wine Berserkers ID or email on the survey, you’ll receive a wine recommendation tailored just for you once our initial data collection is complete. Just to elaborate on the purpose of this project, when I first began exploring the wine world in college, the challenge was real and a bit daunting – I didn’t know where to start! I’m sure many of you remember similar feelings when starting out. This project aims to simplify that journey for newcomers by leveraging your insights to recommend the perfect starter wine.
It’s kind of a pay-it-forward deal of the wine community.
Thank you for your time and helping to expand the world of wine enthusiasts. Your responses will remain strictly confidential.
Many thanks,
Jay
#WineShouldbeEasierThanBeer
P.S.
If you have any feedback or thoughts on the survey please let me know! All feedback is much appreciated and helpful! Thank you!
I never thought of secondary preferences in wine as a food preference (e.g., I prefer thyme to bell pepper in my food… I never thought it would be similar in wine… if you had black pepper as its own category that would have ranked higher than pairing it with 5-spice and clove). Interesting survey. And I’m curious about the turtleneck correlation!
Hi Shan!
We don’t know the answer yet! It is through the participation of the community that we will gain anything close to the truth. Luckily we have a lot of wine enthusiasts! I’m also curious whether or not if the food preference directly relates to wine… Also curious about the turtleneck as well. Will PM you after some concrete insights! Thanks for your participation!
I believe that the general correlation is that if you are sensitive to bitter foods, you may also may be sensitive to tags in your clothes and labels in your shirts etc.
Hi Larry,
I’m not working with either Linda Baroshuk or Tim Hanni! I’m an undergraduate so I don’t have a department at Penn! This is a passion project I’m working on with my friends! Thank you for your participation and interest!
Cheers!
Jay, have you thought about asking the experienced wine drinkers for specific categories they like? Maybe you could even have them rank some of the major categories?
Hi Doug,
Let me know if I understood you correctly. So, currently we’re asking people to rate the categories on a scale of 1-7 e.g.) stone fruits, citrus fruits, floral notes, etc. Are you suggesting that we ask them to rank them e.g.) stonefruits > citrus > floral? OR are you suggesting that asking wine drinkers their favorite category e.g.) wine varietal - AVA and rank them?
Thank you! All feedback and questions are super helpful in making this work.
I think the idea is to see if the abstract flavor preferences map onto specific wine preferences. The challenge is determining how to categorize those wine preferences. You could do it by region and/or grape, which is a rough guide to preferences for body/tannin/acid etc. But, we all know it also gets much more specific with producers, vineyards, cuvees, etc.
Not sure if it is possible to link with people’s cellartracker to get revealed preference data on what people purchase and consume. That could be interesting.
More broadly, I have often thought that my food preference for ‘simpler’ cuisines - with a few ingredients offsetting each other, as opposed to complex stews - mirrors my preference for mono-cepage wines as opposed to blended wines.
But, I do like robust flavors in food (e.g. garlic, summer fruits and vegetables infinitely more exciting than the milder spring vegetables or fall apples/pears, etc) and then I like more restrained northern wines. E.G. my ideal food is in Provence but my ideal wine is in Burgundy… Difficult to classify/track everything!
I believe that this is still a work in progress - but it is moving forward.
Some of these questions also mirror the Tastry stuff.
Interesting to try to draw conclusions and based on these questions - and my guess is that the answers from those here on the Board would be different than the ‘average’ wine consumer.
Cool thread, and a very interesting passion project.
The survey does a good job of offering options but you might consider adding a 0=no experience. I’ve never had bubble tea in my life (though I assumed this was a sweet vs dry question).
Good luck with this, I’m interested to see what conclusions you draw.
Rahsaan, you’re spot on. Definitely categorization is a challenge. For starters, are we even sure that the current method that we categorize wines is accurate or efficient? For example, an unoaked viognier and an unoaked chardonnay may be a better group than grouping oaked and unoaked chardonnay together… Perhaps not actionable, but just food for thought.
i’ve never thought of cellartracker … definitely would be interesting but I’m not too well-versed in the forum or the app. Will look into it. Also, thank you so much for your insights.
This is super relevant. I’ve never thought of a matrix-esque scheme with wine and food:
e.g.)
complex wine - simple (ingredient-based) food; mono-cepage - complex food; mono-cepage - simple food, complex wine - complex food.
Personally, I enjoy complex wine and simple foods. E.g.) Burgundy - Tenderloin
I think it might be cultural. For example, some cuisines have an emphasis on accentuating the underlying ingredients and some have a focus on complex culinary skills.
I actually do wonder what other people think about this! Especially those who have a knack for pairing.
I agree. Currently I am trying to recruit responses from those who have a high interest in wine like wine berserkers. We’ll have to see how the responses change … if spurious correlations increase or decrease when the responses are more widely recruited.
Rahsaan’s got it. Categories of wine, not characteristics. White Burgundy, Albariño, dry Riesling, oaky California Chardonnay, etc. I understand that there’s complexity in terms of styles within categories, but I think this could (if done well) give a much better idea of preferences than the lists of characteristics alone, for experienced wine drinkers. How much I like tannic reds is not universal. It has much more to do with which tannic reds than whether or not I like tannins, for me personally. Plus, the fact that I do like a lot of tannic reds doesn’t mean that I don’t like relatively low-tannin reds. In fact, there are plenty of those that I also enjoy a lot. Asking me which grape/region combinations i like could give you a pretty clear picture of all of this.
