The Official Wine Thread - Page 998

Everyone please lay off with the insults and bickering. Get back to the subject at hand and play nice.

Going to Zachy's for the first time tomorrow. Pretty excited. Most buys will be sub $25. Anyone had any good old world whites below that price recently?

there are some macons there that fit the bill

Heading over to a neighbor's in a bit and pulling a mag out. 06 ME, ME Estates. Should be drinking pretty nice.

Wouldn't it just be 7/100, since you already have that one corked bottle? (Unless of course your senses have given you a 0% idea on the probability that the first one is off)

Subscribed to this thread.

Nope, he asked for the odds of two bottles being corked. The odds for the first bottles being corked, 7/100, times the odds of the second bottles being corked, 7/100.

7/100 as an answer should be correct if the question was something like: "According to a WS study in 05, the odds of a bottle of wine being corked are 7/100. Assume you have (just opened) a bottle of corked wine. What are the odds that the next bottle of wine you open is corked too?"

Yes, he did ask that and explained it like that way as well. Something in the sentence structure and my poor mastery of the English language must have thrown me off.

Edit: Ah, it's because he was also talking about a hypothetical situation in which he had a corked bottle in the fridge.

Was a bit out of balance for me. Too much acid. Not a bad bottle but not "knock your socks off" like I was hoping.

yeah, the point was if one bottle is suspect and you're not sure if it's corked or not, go out and buy another because the odds of two bottles in a row being corked are exceedingly low.

The last 5 pages have made me glad that I drink scotch and cognac.

Are you sure about this, mathematically? P(A and B) where A=bottle 1 corked and B=bottle 2 corked. In case we don't know about either bottle it's 1/200, if we assume that a bottle is corked with P=7/100. In your scenario however, we know that bottle 1 is corked, so the probability of bottle 1 being corked is 100%, therefore P(A and B) = 100/100*7/100=7/100. It's like throwing two dices. For (6,6) it's 1/36 (1/6*1/6), for any doubles however it's 1/6=[(1/6)*1/6)]*6. Same as seeing the "any doubles" as event A = throw 1 is fixed (or bottle one is corked) and event B = has to match number X with prob. 1/6 (or has to match "corked" with prob 7/100).
Other example is flipping a coin. The probability of heads is 1/2 (we assume that it never lands on the side). The probability of flipping three heads in a row is 1/2*1/2*1/2=1/8; for two in a row it's obviously 1/4. If you just flipped a head (have a corked bottle) and want to flip another head (open another corked bottle), the probability is 1/2 (7/100) and not 1/4 (5/200).
Lots of words for a small statement but I hope I make sense.

i'm not sure about it mathematically nor have i thought about it with that much vigor. I agree that if the first is corked, than the second stands a 7/100 chance, but the basis of my 1/200 prediction is the odds of having two bottles in a row that are both corked.

Corked bottles hit very randomly. I've had nights where I open 30+ bottles at a big dinner and all are perfect. I've had other nights just at home where I've gone through 3 different wines which are all messed up. There are varying degrees of a wine being corked. TCA is a chemical that is technically present in all corks. Once it gets above a certain threshold you can detect it. If more TCA is in that cork then the smell will be more prominent. The annoying bottles are the ones that are "funky" and "off" where you're not really sure if it's corked, but you know it's not great. The best way to tell if something seems off is to decant. The corked smell generally becomes more prominent with exposure to oxygen. And 9 times out of 10 you can smell TCA on the bottom of the cork the moment the corked is pulled.

Thanks for the rec. Zachy's was an interesting experience. I had assumed it would be a bit like Astor Place Wines. It doesnt have nearly as wide ranging a selection as Astor but it is much stronger in France and Italy. Here is what I picked up, everything was under $25 except for the baby Beaucastel which was $27.

Where are you guys getting this 7% figure? That seems high.