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The Wizard Of Wine

SRW

Master Poster
SRW
Joined
Jul 25, 2001
Messages
2,903
I had to change my shirt after spilling coffee all over it this morning,
it had to do with this article:

http://www.montereyherald.com/mld/montereyherald/business/15216472.htm

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NAPA -- A new wine gadget promises to save pennies and palates by using magnets -- yes, magnets -- to give brash young wines some polish.

Skeptics scoff, but the Bev Wizard, retailing at $30, is attracting attention in wine circles.
The wizard is the invention of Patrick Farrell, a physician by training who is also a master of wine, a certification administered by the London-based Institute of Masters of Wine that is widely recognized as a rigorous demonstration of expertise.
Farrell started out tying magnets to the neck of a bottle at the urging of business acquaintances who were distributing magnets to try to improve water quality. At the time, he thought the chance magnets would work on wine was ''about the same as seeing pigs fly.''
But, he says, ''I took the thing home, put it on a bottle of shiraz from Australia and was shocked to see it made it taste smoother and fruitier. So then I went down to my cellar and I got a bottle of Bordeaux from the Medoc and it made it taste softer and fruitier.''

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Unlike the other wine magnets this one has a hole in the top to let air in.

I an sick of writing letters to this news paper.

Steve
 
They do at least ask a chemist who tells them exaclty how it is. All it does is seperate mugs from their money.

Some of the papers here in the UK would be running a prize draw to win this miraculous piece of tat. Think yourself relatively lucky.
 
I saw the title of this thread and the word "magnets" popped into my head. Does this mean I win a million dollars? :p
 
Sounds like Yahoo picked it up. Yahoo I wonder if they just put an empty plastic case, without the magnet, on a bottle if they could "tell the difference"? Anyone in wine circles care to try that one?
 
Wine critics and so called 'Wine Masters' seem to be blackbelts in BS anyway, never mind adding nonsense inventions into the mix. You read the descriptions they come up with to describe something that's a couple of steps short of vinegar and you'd be hard pressed to believe a word they say about anything afterwards.
 
My letter:

Yahzi to the Monterey Herald said:
Could you please ask Dr. Patrick Farrell when he is going to astound the world by winning the JREF million dollar challenge? A million bucks is pretty good pay for drinking a few glasses of wine. James Randi will pay Farrell a million bucks if he can drink 10 glasses of wine, and identify which 5 came from a bottle with Farrell's magnet on it, and which 5 did not. Doesn't that sound like easy money to you?

And of course the money is only the beginning: this invention is worthy of a Nobel prize, if only Farrell could scientifically demonstrate it actually works.

But if you ask Farrell to perform that test under controlled conditions, you will see the most astounding wiggling, dodging, and excuse-making you have ever seen.

So the question now becomes: why didn't your columnist ask him these questions? Why didn't she understand that his claims are earth-shaking, a blow to the very foundation of physics, the overturning of the Standard Model, and a hundred times more important than anything Einstein ever claimed?

Why does the press insist on reporting on this kind of stuff without ever bringing up scientific testing? Why does the press not demand that something be tested in a rigorous and controlled fashion before they let people use their space to claim it is true?

Why do you present idiotic, impossible claims as equally as you present sober, scientific claims? Are you just unable to tell the difference?

This is like reading a report on a finger found in old car-lot. The reporter talks about the finger, describes it, mentions how it was found... but never, ever asks WHERE IS THE REST OF THE BODY. Do you think that would be competent reporting? If not, then why do you think this is?

A free press is one of the pillars of democratic society. A press that cannot distinguish fact from fiction when it comes to the most basic physical claims (why didn't your columnist do her own test? Is she really that lazy?) will soon be enslaved by the political establishment. I realize your motivation is not treason, but simple incompetence; but the end result remains the same.

- yahzi@cox.net
Click to expand...
As usual, I expect zero response.
 
I think it's funny that the wine woo woos are being targeted now on this forum. It is long overdue. One thing I have always been skeptical of is when you open a bottle of wine, you are supposed to let it "breathe" for about 20 minutes before tasting it. I can't see how a whole bottle can exchange gases from such a small surface area at the neck of the bottle. It is wine dogma though to let it breathe. Can someone explain this?
I had some two buck chuck last week and I thought it was pretty good.
 
Yahzi said:
My letter:
. . . James Randi will pay Farrell a million bucks if he can drink 10 glasses of wine, and identify which 5 came from a bottle with Farrell's magnet on it, and which 5 did not. . .
Click to expand...
Has Randi agreed to this protocol?
 
Morchella said:
..One thing I have always been skeptical of is when you open a bottle of wine, you are supposed to let it "breathe" for about 20 minutes before tasting it. I can't see how a whole bottle can exchange gases from such a small surface area at the neck of the bottle. It is wine dogma though to let it breathe. Can someone explain this?
I had some two buck chuck last week and I thought it was pretty good.
Click to expand...

decanting the wine into a wide mouth decanter would let it breath.

Time isn't really the problem, nor is it exchange with the liquid, it is just to let the gases that accumulate at the top a chance to waft away so they don't overwhelm your senses. This allows you to smell the wine and not the concentrated gas at the top of the bottle.

$30 for a device that might do something (most likely doesn't) is robbery when one can go to a wine shop and spend $7 on a bottle of wine that tastes pretty damn good.
 
I wonder how much I could charge for a bottle...make that a box, of wine I claim went through an MRI.
 
Yahzi said:
Does it matter? Farrell will never agree to any protocol.
Click to expand...
If I were him, I would agree to the one you implied Randi had agreed to. The random odds of identifying which 5 glasses of wine came from a bottle with Farrell's magnet on it, and which 5 did not are not all that high. Specifically, they are 5/10 * 4/9 * 3/8 *2/7 * 1/6 = 1/252.
 
Rodney said:
If I were him, I would agree to the one you implied Randi had agreed to. The random odds of identifying which 5 glasses of wine came from a bottle with Farrell's magnet on it, and which 5 did not are not all that high. Specifically, they are 5/10 * 4/9 * 3/8 *2/7 * 1/6 = 1/252.
Click to expand...
If he can do the test three times in a row, I imagine that's good enough for anybody.

On the other hand, if he does it once, and then refuses to ever try again, we all know what that means, too.
 
Rodney, anyone could pass a 'blind' test if it were poorly designed. If you give me two glasses of wine and tell me one of them was treated with the clip, I'm likely to 'taste' a difference most of the time and conclude that the wine clip works. But the difference is not real and it is caused by expectation bias. There have been many other tests where subjects are told that something is being changed and they experience a real difference, even when the 'something' didn't get changed at all. We are all potential victims of expectation bias. I know this because as a musician and sound engineer, it happens to me every so often. I can spend up to 1/2 hour adjusting the sound on a piece of equipment, only to find that the equipment was out of the signal path!

These poorly designed tests are the kind of 'blind' tests that the wine magazines are using. They only test to see if there is a difference in taste and they no *not* attempt to identify which glass of wine came from the magnetic bottle! A well-designed, double-blind, randomized test would be very difficult to pass. Anyway, we went through this wine clip nonsense a few weeks ago:

http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?t=58233

The Dan's Data article describes a much better test that includes a demonstration of expectation bias and shows that the clip does not work as claimed.
 
Yahzi said:
If he can do the test three times in a row, I imagine that's good enough for anybody.

On the other hand, if he does it once, and then refuses to ever try again, we all know what that means, too.
Click to expand...
You didn't say anything about doing it three times in a row in your letter: "Could you please ask Dr. Patrick Farrell when he is going to astound the world by winning the JREF million dollar challenge? A million bucks is pretty good pay for drinking a few glasses of wine. James Randi will pay Farrell a million bucks if he can drink 10 glasses of wine, and identify which 5 came from a bottle with Farrell's magnet on it, and which 5 did not. Doesn't that sound like easy money to you?"
 
Rodney said:
You didn't say anything about doing it three times in a row in your letter:
Click to expand...
The rules of the challenge already cover that. There is a preliminary test, and then a real test.

If you want to interpret my letter so legalistically, consider this: why would James Randi feel bound by any comments I made?

Perhaps your point is that I was not strictly, 100%, completely accurate. Or perhaps your point is that you have difficulty reading common English.

My point is that Farrell will never take the challenge.

Do you have anything to say in regards to my point?
 
Yahzi said:
The rules of the challenge already cover that. There is a preliminary test, and then a real test.

If you want to interpret my letter so legalistically, consider this: why would James Randi feel bound by any comments I made?

Perhaps your point is that I was not strictly, 100%, completely accurate. Or perhaps your point is that you have difficulty reading common English.

My point is that Farrell will never take the challenge.

Do you have anything to say in regards to my point?
Click to expand...
I don't know whether he will take the challenge, but I don't think it's accurate to suggest that he could win it if he correctly identified five of only ten glasses of wine.
 
Rodney said:
I don't know whether he will take the challenge, but I don't think it's accurate to suggest that he could win it if he correctly identified five of only ten glasses of wine.
Click to expand...
If he could do it repeatedly, yes, he could.

If he can only do it by getting lucky and guessing, then no, he can't.

The nature of the challenge should make it self-evident that it is not a gambling game; it is not about being able to get lucky once. For him to accept that challenge on that basis would be to concede defeat at the outset.
 
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