What makes a champagne vintage great? Ask a deep learning model

I am throughly convinced that the most you should ever spend on Champagne is 50-80 dollars (ex a normal bottle of veuve clicquot), and only in extra special circumstances go near the 200 dollar price point. Anything above that is just paying for style over substance.<p>Specifically I taste tested several bottles based on an increasing scale of rarity and price. This included a 200 dollar bottle of dom, a 200 dollar bottle of La Grande Dame, and a one of a kind bottle of Dom stored properly in my friends basement since 1988 (a supposedly good vintage).<p>I have no skin in the wine game. I just don&#x27;t like getting tricked by the luxury business. 50-80 is the sweet spot of quality and price, with diminishing returns in quality at the 200 price point Once you get above the top recent vintages, you are just paying for exclusivity not the product.

<i>Columbo: How can you tell a good wine from an average wine?</i><p><i>Frenchman: By, uh... the price.</i><p>— Columbo S03E02, Any Old Port in a Storm

They could replace all the wine&#x2F;whisky&#x2F;audiophile&#x2F;cigar&#x2F;marijuana etc. aficionado writers with AI models and no one would notice.

Saying that a vintage is &quot;great&quot; is like saying a hamburger is &quot;great&quot;. Sure, there are plenty of ways to screw up or cheap out, but everything above the &quot;nice&quot; level is 95%% personal taste.

There&#x27;s a recent startup which wanted to take taste prediction of luxury drinks to the next level with ML:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.mpg.de&#x2F;18773206&#x2F;the-signature-of-taste" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.mpg.de&#x2F;18773206&#x2F;the-signature-of-taste</a>

Most big name champagne is priced to cover the marketing and sponsorship, small estate champagne can sometimes be better value for money as they have smaller overheads. At the same time the big names can produce more at scale or rely on deeper stocks for blending before bottling. Rather than arguing that no one can taste the difference go to a wine show or even a specialist tasting where you can try many different types then decide what is worth buying a case of.

As a Ganjier, I can’t wait for this level of data analysis of terroir variables to make it to the cannabis industry.

Should probably have just used Catboost