Riesling tasting

Riesling tasting at Vintage Wine Merchants on Santana Row. Wines pretty, much got better and better in a logarithmic way, so except for certain notable characteristics noted in the later wines, it was harder and harder to taste the difference. Thus all the ...'s when I was unable to characterize a variation from the thread. The ellipsis doesn't mean the wine was bad or unnotable, but that I had said all I could say about it already.

2004 Scheurebe Kabinett
Sweet, no finish

2004 Muller-catoir Spatlese
Fruity, longer finish. Sweet

2004 Kerpen Wehlener Spatlese
Pear and honey. Particularly tasty. Reasonable finish, but not super long

2004 Spreitzer Spatlese 303
Fruity, more tart. Strong pear(?) finish, long.

2004 Leitz Rudesheimer Berg Spatlese
Tart, a little sparkly. Citrus and brown sugar(?)

2004 Diel Spatlese
Less sparkly, good but hard to distinguish, ordering may matter.

2004 Donhoff Schlossbockelheimer Felsenberg Spatlese
...

2004 Donhoff Oberhauser Brucke Spatlese
...

2004 Norheimer Dellchen Spatlese
...

2004 Niederhauser Hermannshohle Spatlese
More honey in finish

2004 Mueller-Catoir Haardter Burgergarten Auslese
Burst of sweetness, almost like a dessert wine but not thick

2004 Donhoff Oberhauser Brucke Auslese
Not as sweet as the M-C. More mineral taste. Tart finish

1996 Donhoff Niderhauser Hermannshohle Spatlese
Huge nose, very grape. Honey, some kind of herbal or forest taste. Kind of candy apple finish, but not too sweet.

Sales Scripts

Ever since entering the world of sales, I've been increasingly sensitized to sales techniques and strategies that are employed in almost everyday life. One standard sales technique is the use of scripts. Telemarketers, low-end door to door salespeople, or even religious groups employing low-cost and/or minimally trained staff often use this technique. An experienced sales professional will map out opening lines and a tree of responses to give to common objections in order to "harden" an otherwise minimally motivated or intelligent person. The staffer then memorizes this script and delivers the message from rote. For instance, a script may say "if a customer says they have no money, say 'I can offer you an installment plan of 10 payments of only $2.99.'"

A few days ago, some teenage-looking girl shows up at my door with some written paraphenalia in hand and delivers a shockingly monotone:

"Hi, I'm trying to raise money for a trip to Europe. If I can get 500 points, I will receive $5000 to fund an educational trip. Have you been to Europe?"

I reply "Yes."

She follows up with an extraordinarily unenthusiastic: "Really? Where have you been?"

"England," I say.

"Well, if you will buy one or more of the magazines in this list, I will earn X points for each subscription."

"No, I don't need any magazines."

Now, comes the scripted tenacity. She immediately follows up with a quick but dull:

"Many of your neighbors who said the same thing have bought magazines and donated them to charity. Would you like to do that?"

"No thanks."

Then, the clincher: "You don't want to help me?"

"Sorry, no."

I motioned to close my door and that was pretty much the end.

Two things struck me as particularly interesting about this chain of events. The first was the whole "Have you been to Europe" warm-up. The second was the really dejected "You don't want to help me?" I guess I don't realy get a lot of door-to-door sales visits or telesales calls, but among those I recall, this is the most sophisticated script in memory.

It also reminds me of a story Meng mentioned last week where two singing telegram people showed up at his door one night. The end up in his dining room, singing to him and his dinner crew. Suddenly, they stop, and proceed to utterly shock their audience by trying to sell some magazines.

This story then reminded me of the Mossad recruitment story where before getting into the training program, a potential recruit needs to talk their way into a random person's (picked by the trainer) apartment and end up being seen by a spotter on the person's balcony drinking a glass of water.

Connections... Connections...

Inniskillin Tasting

Went to another one of these bourgeois tastings at VinoVenue w/ Rourke. This one was an ice wine event run by people representing Inniskillin, a Canadian ice wine producer. They brought 3 people with them, including a local distribution/biz dev person. There were lots of props and propaganda. Unfortunately, the main host/speaker was not as amusing as the British port guy from the previous VinoVenue event (sadly, no notes from then). The guy said "wine geeky" a lot (and seemed to be kinda wine geeky himself). Rourke calls Inniskillin a "marketing machine."

Pearl Vidal 2003
Sweet fruity, not much acid taste but not cloying (balance?). Very thick, not citrusy

Oak Aged Vidal Icewine 2003
Said to be basically the same as Pearl except oak rather than steel aged. Supposedly very different taste, but I was unable to detect any variance from the prior.

Silver Riesling 2002
Lighter odor than the Vidals. Less honey odor, more of some kind of fruit, maybe citrus? Much less sweet, maybe floral. Some kind of cleanser scent; host claims it is desirable

Cabernet Franc 2002
Not as acidic, not particularly "red" (especially compared to late harvest Zin). Nose hard to distinguish from Vidal.

Sparkling 2001
Not made through secondary fermentation (makes bottles explode). Fermentation done in tanks to control pressure before bottling. All kinds of wierd flavors in it. Very interesting.

In the end, none of the ice wines were really that awesome, only the sparkling was kind of interesting.

Totally Bogus

So, I was flying out to Atlanta last week and, while browsing through the SkyMall, came across this extremely bogus looking item:

"Vintage Express Aging Accelerator Ages Beverages 10 Years In As Little As 10 Seconds"

I've always questioned the logic of buying stuff in SkyMall, since much of it is gimmicky and all of it is overpriced. But this is the first time that I've seen something so utterly fraudulent in there. Check out the flavor text that accompanied that tagline:

"The Earth's magnetic field aligns liquid particles much like tiny compass needles. This alignment is destroyed during the manufacturing process. Traditional slow aging realigns the particles, but is an expensive, time consuming process. Vintage Express quickly realigns the particles in beverages by surrounding them with extremely powerful Neodymium magnets to replicate the Earth's magnetic field. Because the magnets are ten thousand times more powerful than the Earth's magnetic field, beverages are aged rapidly. Vintage Express "opens" the flavor of a bottle of wine in only five minutes, and dramatically improves the flavor of Scotch, Whisky, Bourbon, Tequila, Vodka or any liquor in as little as ten seconds! The longer the beverage remains in the Vintage Express, the greater the effect."

And then, check out this ridiculous picture from the product website:

Who buys this crap? Although, apparently I'm not the only one to notice. Someone wrote in to James Randi's site (search down to the letter titled "A Matter of Taste") on the same topic about a year ago.

Information Leakage

So I was recently pointed to Meng's blog (by both Rourke and Meng), and noted this recent entry. Now, okay, you gotta subtract out the whole creepy-stalking-girls premise and replace the guaranteed-everyone-blogs assumption with something more probabilistic. (I was somehow in the mood to ponder this stuff after randomly watching the last episode of this BBC spy-reality-tv show that was actually quite engrossing.) What's left is a pretty interesting almost-anonymous information leakage attack that can be executed against live people in a non-electronic context with some probability of success.

I guess I find it interesting because, as someone who blogs fairly often, I can see myself falling for this kind of attack without realizing it. If I were a a diary type blogger, I could probably fall for such an attack even more easily. This tagging attack strikes me as one of those things that's ingeniously devious from one perspective, while completely invisible from another. But now, I shall be on my guard...