mceljo

I could track down someone that could recommend the most similar inexpensive wine and see if I could get my sister to pour him a glass of it on the down low and see if he would recognize that something was off.

That would be a biased test because you’re not allowing the test subject a chance for a fair evaluation. Spicy food, for example, could easily swamp subtle differences in wine.

I should test my brother-in-law sometime.  He and my sister actually named my niece after a favorite wine.  I could track down someone that could recommend the most similar inexpensive wine and see if I could get my sister to pour him a glass of it on the down low and see if he would recognize that something was off.

IMHO this is called “tricking”, not “testing”. A test would be if you actually told him what you were trying to accomplish, and put together (with his permission) a blind test for him which you would administer. It’s also fair to your BIL

When do you really know if a wine is good - or not? Next morning...

This thread tells more about all the posters, than it says about wine or music... mcslipp (good post, sir) mentioned humility... less the person actually knows how little they really know, more arrogant (and ignorant) they are.

If we drink long enough, and if we are open to taste all the different wines we have available, we could become more informed. Or, more entrenched in what we prefer - or what we think we do. All in all, that too is a very personal thing.

In my opinion, HiFi equipment is a tool. No more, no less. If I must, I can compare HiFi equipment to a glass, used to taste the wine (or Cognac, or Armagnac, etc). One can have the best HiFi setup money can possibly buy, but if a recording is crap, all you going to hear will be that crap. No stereo can make mp3 sound like live event. Suddenly, measurements are not important any more. Same for Wine or Cognac. If your VS is a headache in the bottle, the best tulip glass will not prevent that hungover... Guess what - some XO are not much better!

And if you can't make yourself buy and try $100 bottle of wine, stick to the beer. Life is too short and wine is not for you. Better yet, just drink water. 

@kiwiscott

I love this thread. As someone who’s just getting started I’d love it if we had a standard set of terminology we could start to communicate but to do that we really need reference systems. 

Sorry to say, but if it hasn't been accomplished in the last 145 years, it probably never will be. In fact we are going the opposite way. Anarchy rules!!!

1878 – Thomas Edison perfects a cylinder based Phonograph that he invented the previous year. It expanded on the principles of Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville‘s phonautograph and recorded sound onto a tinfoil sheet phonograph cylinder, and could both record and reproduce sounds. His first recording? It was the nursery rhyme “Mary’s got little lamb.”He also sets up the Edison Speaking Phonograph Company in the same year.

@thyname - "Tricking" would be a fair assessment.  I think he would see the humor in it or I wouldn't do it.