One of the most thought-provoking papers at this year’s meeting of the American Association of Wine Economics was presented by Günter Schamel, a professor at the Free University of Bolzano. Schamel’s study, which is still in progress, has thus far looked at a data set of 260 eBay auctions of empty wine bottles. In his Full Article…
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In Sweden, all wine stores are organized by price
Sweden has one of the world’s most controlled alcohol regimes, with steep taxation, a state-controlled retail monopoly, and a 20-year-old minimum age to buy alcohol at a store (and they really card, too). The only store at which a consumer can buy wine, beer, or liquor in Sweden is Systembolaget, the state-controlled retail monopoly. Is Full Article…
What the F.A.A. and Robert Parker’s Wine Advocate have in common
Ethics scandals are politico porn. They’re also fertile ground for undeserved scapegoating. But there’s one category in which, across the board, there’s not nearly enough public stoning going on: the world of information intermediaries. On the government side, that means regulatory agencies; in the private sector, it’s the critics, the expert witnesses in capitalism’s de Full Article…
How long does leftover wine keep in the bottle? Wine-preservation myths and a simple solution
I’m not sure which of the following two myths is more ridiculous: the myth that you can re-cork a half-drunk bottle of wine and keep it around for a week and have it “still be good,” or the mutually exclusive, but equally misguided, myth that you can keep wine from going bad with commercial “wine preserver” devices. The Full Article…
Why inexpensive American wine is so bad
The New Yorker’s recent profile of Fred Franzia has sparked a debate amongst the wine pundits on the question of why it’s so hard to find good American wines under $10, under $12, or even $20. I had an interesting conversation on this topic with Tyler Colman the other day. There’s a debate on the topic on Tyler’s Full Article…
Do pitchers hit more poorly because they’re expected to?
Like golf, baseball still has some touchingly quaint pen-and-paper blue laws, and when Tampa Bay Rays manager Joe Maddon signed an incorrectly filled out scorecard for Sunday’s game against Cleveland, the Rays lost their designated-hitter privileges (the American League allows the DH to bat for the pitcher). As such, pitcher Andy Sonnanstine, who shouldn’t have normally had Full Article…
The Gillette razor theory of consumer behavior
In Adam Gopnik’s excellent piece about Gillette razors and innovation in the New Yorker, he discusses the fact that each new generation of razors—Gillette’s latest, the Fusion, now has five blades and a “triple-A battery inside, which makes it vibrate delicately to no particular purpose, like an old electric football game” (probably the best simile I’ve read Full Article…
Prohibition and Craigslist’s victimless crime: on legalizing prostitution
We’ve mainstreamed the debate over ending the prohibition on marijuana. Why is the debate over legalizing prostitution still a taboo? Blaming a classifieds web site for the actions of an alleged murderer is almost as absurd as blaming high-school pot smokers for September 11. Nonetheless, Craigslist has decided to remove (or at least rename) the “erotic Full Article…
Do the molecular gastronomists have no clothes?
On culinary televangelism and the Parkerization of cuisine In the introduction to his book La Cocina al Desnudo (roughly “The Kitchen Laid Bare”), the chef Santi Santamaría writes: “one of the greatest challenges faced by today’s chefs is to avoid becoming the court jesters of the snobs and the posh.” One of the highlights of Full Article…
Dog food vs. pâté on Colbert Report
Apparently Stephen Colbert was amused by our paper investigating whether people could taste the difference between pâté and dog food. His conclusion was pretty funny.