As some of you know, I’ve been doing semantic analyses of wine reviews we receive online.  Mostly, I’ve used this data to make silly computer-generated wine reviews.  But today I’m going to use the data to talk a bit about word clouds and word frequency.

Robert Parker’s most used words

Robert Parker is one of the most influential wine critics on earth and he popularized a one hundred point rating scale which dominates the US wine market.  An American named Tom Wark did some data gathering about Robert Parker’s perfect scored wines.  Basically, he looked at the 224 wines that had received a perfect score of 100 from Robert Parker.

Wark published the list of words that appear the most in tasting notes for 100 point wines.  This should give us some insight into what sort of characteristics appear in wines that Parker thought of as perfect.

For words like “Elegan” or “Intens”, the reason they cut off like that is because Wark grouped Intense, intensely, intensity, and other nearly identical words into one word group labeled simply “Intens”.  Fair enough!

What we get is that Parker uses the word rich a ton when he tastes a wine that merits 100 points out of 100.  Intensity, concentration and spiciness also come up a lot.  Minerality, massiveness, balance, complexity and length are also in there.

I think this is a really fun idea.  Because I’m a data nerd.

Customer comments – Tastes Like Wine

So Parker often describes “perfect” wines as rich, intense and concentrated.  What words do my customers use most?

Yes, rather hilariously, the most used words are Taste Like Wine.  Not together mind you.

So I did an analysis of customer comments regarding Trah Lah Lah 2008 on Naked Wines, an online wine retailer that represents and promotes us in the UK.   The word cloud above is a graphical representation of the words used most frequently in reviews, and the most common words appear in larger font size.  I generated the word cloud above using wordle, although I did move some of the words around in a graphic program later on to emphasize the tastes like wine joke. But the size of the words is accurate!  I just moved them to the top of the cloud. Wordle also automatically removes definite articles, personal pronouns, possessive adjectives and certain other words that are more about syntax than meaning.

Now, there is a huge difference between what Naked Wines customers say about Trah Lah Lah 2008 and what Robert Parker says about wines he rates as 100 points, namely because very few of the comments wine drinkers left on Naked are in “tasting note” form.  Instead of striving for journalistic, objective tasting notes about richness or spice, people tend to write about their whole wine experience.  It seems pretty normal that the most used words include “taste” “like” and “wine”.  😀   Personal pronouns and possessive adjectives (I, me, our, its) appear much more frequently.

Here is a list of the words that got used most (I think I might have taken out all the definite articles and certain words that only serve syntax) and the number of times that word appeared.

1. I   94
2. wine    52
3. not    32
4. really    23
5. bottle    22
6. we    21
7. again    20
8. you    20
9. good    19
10. very    18
11. like    18
12. some    18
13. my    18
14. taste    18
15. buy    15
16. french    15
17. red    14
18. more    14
19. me    13
20. just    13
21. if    13
22. well    13
23. quite    12
24. one    12
25. first    12
26. bit    10
27. better    10
28. too    10
29. all    10
30. wines    10

Is there a meaningful difference between Parker 100 tasting notes and Naked Wines customer comments?

So there is a huge difference in which words appear the most.  But is this a meaningful difference?  Well, for the most part, this is not a good comparison.  But it is a very fun comparison and it inspires certain ideas.

For one thing, why are tasting notes built the way they are?  Why do wine critics try to objectively describe flavors and odors in wines?

When they do try to refer to the overall experience of the wine, why does their vocabulary focus on richness, depth, complexity and so on? Wine drinkers don’t think this way (at least not according to this small sample from Naked Wines customer reviews of Trah Lah Lah 2008).

Again, this isn’t really a fair comparison because tasting notes aren’t the same as customer comments.  Tasting notes are specifically built to describe the experience of a wine.  Customer comments can be anything.  They can be about an overall experience, they can be about a specific pairing the person tried, they can be simpler statements (eg I liked it, I didn’t like it), they can be congratulatory or simply grateful (eg Thanks!, Good job, guys!).   This means that customer reviews won’t limit themselves to particular vocabulary like tasting note jargon.

Now, even if we limit the analysis of customer comments to only the descriptive words (like rich, intense, etc.) we get a list that’s pretty far from Parker’s. The most common are Really, Very, Good. 😀  Of course the statistics can be a bit misleading since Not is even more common than those!  The first descriptive words that appear on the list which might be described as more precise are “French” and “Red”.  😀

Also, I’m only using the 100 point scores from Parker but I’m using all comments for my Trah Lah Lah 2008 on Naked Wines. One might argue that the reason Trah Lah Lah comments don’t have the word rich is because the wine is not 100 points.  So I will admit right here and now that this is bad science.  This is not a perfect comparison.  However, it still illustrates my notion that wine critics use a vocabulary that is actually somewhat foreign to the average wine drinker.

You can also argue that wine drinkers lack the refinement or courage to say things like “intense and deep” while it’s very easy to say “tastes like good wine”.  But I think that’s my point.  Regular wine drinkers don’t necessarily understand or relate to tasting notes like “unctuous”.  Maybe wine communication should use vocabulary more familiar to wine drinkers.  How would most drinkers react if the back of a bottle said “This is a French red wine and it tastes good and could use some food”?

Apology and shaking my fist at Stephen Colbert

I was going to post these word clouds later with a lot more analysis of Parker’s reviews.. I would also like to do word clouds of Parker’s ediotrial content (instead of straight up tasting notes) and even do some for other critics and journalists.  But Stephen Colbert recently beat me to the punch and I hate it when Stephen Colbert steals my ideas!!! 😀

I promise to talk about all of this in more depth and with more rigor if I get chosen to present at SXSW in Austin next year. The talk I suggested is about data analysis, reinterpretation, visual representation, infographics, and all sorts of other stuff that might help people in non-verbal jobs like wine communicate with the rest of the world online.

I was catching up on my favorite webcomics last night and I read this beauty from Wondermark:

It’s not his drop-dead funniest work, but it is awesome and its appearance on the site illustrates a classic web comic phenomenon. He offhandedly made up an academic theory and then a bunch of nerds like me responded with a whole slew of already existing theories in the realms of mathematics, economics, philosophy.

So I thought I would chime in because I am an oenophile and a winemaker to boot. Hey, David Malki, did you know French winemakers read your comics?

Oh, by the way, this is one of those drunken run-away posts that ends up being way too long.

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The comic

The comic’s heroine suggests that there is a behavioral quandary related to how a person manages a finite supply of a consumable object which increases in quality over time. The heroine further suggests that in the face of a difficult choice, it might be best to show a healthy amount of restraint.

Responses to the comic include:

• an article from the Financial Times regarding Wine, Spongeworthiness & Seinfeld
• Dixit’s research that the FT article cites regarding Spongeworthiness & Seinfeld
• an article from American Scientist regarding Optimal Stopping and the Secretary Problem
• a post from Professional Friends of Wine regarding the Myth of Wine Aging

Now, after being flooded with all that information, author David Malki asks:

Is the quality of improvement over time a necessary condition of the Oenophile’s Quandary? Is the question of enjoyment one that can be answered with economics, or should it be left to philosophy? What occasions have caused you to crack open a special bottle of whatever?

Aha, questions that I will take it upon myself to answer.

Is the quality of improvement over time a necessary condition of the Oenophile’s Quandary?

Complicated! Without the quality of improvement over time, the Oenophile’s Quandary is reduced to a simple expression of optimal stopping. However, if we accept the quality of improvement over time to be real, then the Oenophile’s Quandary becomes a totally different problem.

Let’s explain why everybody is trying to compare the Oenophile’s Quandary to the Fussy Suitor Problem. There are similarities but the fact is that wine is nothing like suitors. In the Fussy Suitor problem, you can only pick one person to marry. But there are so many candidates for marriage that you worry you will settle on the wrong one. That’s why it’s interesting for the fussy suitor to study optimal stopping. The Fussy Suitor needs to study when it is most advantageous to stop shopping and settle on a suitor, parking place, dice roll, etc.

If you want to translate the Oenophile’s dilemma in terms of stopping problems like the fussy suitor, you have to realize that the bottles are not the suitors. Oenophiles know exactly what their bottles are at the start of the game. Whereas a part of the stopping problem is that you don’t know if there will be a better suitor, parking place, dice roll, etc. later on. Also, oenophiles can eventually consume all the bottles whereas the suitor has to stop once they’ve made a selection. Hell, the oenophile even has the option of drinking all their wine at once. Needless to say, this is not an option to the fussy suitors who will be breaking a lot of sodomy and decency laws if they try. 😀

If optimal stopping applies to the oenophile’s quandary, it’s because the oenophile must settle on a date to consume each bottle. In that sense, each bottle has a stopping problem where the oenophile must decide to wait for a better occasion to drink the wine. So really, you’re not choosing wines. You’re choosing dates. And the quality of the wine has very little to do with the enjoyment. It’s more the context in which you consume the wine. In this sense, the quality of improvement over time is less relevant and the oenophile’s quandary is reduced to an expression of optimal stopping. Is quality of improvement over time a necessary condition? No. You can lose quality of improvment over time and you’ll still have a basic stopping problem because some days will be better than others for drinking that special bottle.

On the other hand, if you accept that a wine can get better over time (and many wines do, for a certain span of time), then the Oenophile’s Quandary is in no way an expression of optimal stopping. You see, in optimal stopping, the sequence of choices (of suitors, parking places, etc) must be random or at least unknown. If the fussy suitor knows that each suitor will be better than the last, it becomes an exercise in dating as many people as possible in quick succession and then just marrying because you’re so tired of working your way up the pyramid of suitors. If you know that the wine gets better every day, then the mathematician says “This is not a problem of optimal stopping at all. Just wait til the very last minute of your life when the wines will be at their best and drink all the bottles at once.”

Which brings us to the next question:

Is the question of enjoyment one that can be answered with economics, or should it be left to philosophy?

A lot of people will say that economics is the study of enjoyment, or at least the study of choices which are driven by enjoyment and desire. But for every cool dilemma and thought experiment economists contrive to make us think about our desires and our choices, it is important to remember that alcohol deserves a special thought experiment all on its own.

If we allow economists to answer these questions, we need to remember the complex nature of alcohol consumption, which involves a special kind of diminishing return. Economists will quickly admit that the richer you are, the less you can derive from each additional dollar earned. But their dilemmas rarely take into account that one more dollar will make you vomit all over Monty Hall‘s shoes and you’ll wake up hung over next to a goat and a huge orange door with the number three on it. And you won’t understand anything. And you’ll want to know why that goat is being so loud.

So perhaps the solution is to realize that wine requires us to balance two important factors: the quality of the wine and the context in which we drink. The Oenophile with only one case of wine left must balance the optimal stopping decision about the special occasions to drink with the Oenophile’s Quandary of the wine getting better and better. Don’t go too extreme in either direction as you don’t want to be sick as you guzzle all the wine or be a teetotaller who will only toast to celebrate the end of the world.

What occasions have caused you to crack open a special bottle of whatever?

Aha! I knew this moment would come. You’re asking me to use personal experience to demonstrate that balance I was just talking about. Well I have an interesting answer.

While I advocate a reasoned route avoiding extremes of saving all your wine or binge drinking all of it, I also advocate a bit of epicureanism.

Let’s put our mathematician hat back on to see if we can make this work. Oenophiles can’t drink all of their wine immediately because they won’t have any bottles for future special occasions. But oenophiles shouldn’t wait too long lest they miss out on several opportunities. The whole problem is really based on a scarcity of time and wine. Well it’s tough to control the amount of time we have on earth, but we can definitely increase the amount of wine we own. Increase the amount of wine in the oenophile’s collection and the quandary becomes negligble.

That’s why I became a winemaker. I make 50,000 bottles of wine each year. WAY more than I can drink even if I invite all of my friends to every semi-special occasion for the rest of my life.

What occasions have caused me to crack open a special bottle of wine? Is waking up an occasion? It is now.

Additional Notes:

Another expression of optimal stopping that an oenophile might face is the act of shopping for a special bottle. Let’s say the oenophile has a big celebration coming up and has a small budget to buy a very special bottle. He keeps an eye on online auctions. Each time a special bottle comes up, he has to decide whether he will buy that one or wait a little longer to see if a better special bottle comes along. I think that is a more classic presentation of optimal stopping.

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You can argue that the oenophile is uncertain of how each bottle will age, and that is reasonable. Since we don’t know when a wine peaks or even if its spoiled, the decision becomes slightly more random. But it’s not sooo random that it becomes an expression of optimal stopping. You can have a decent idea of the quality of the bottle without opening it; ESPECIALLY in the case of oenophiles who tend to buy a whole case of that special bottle and check in by drinking one every few years, decades, or whatever.

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I would object to using the link from Professional Friends of Wine regarding the Myth of Wine Aging to disprove the oenophile’s quandary. While “most wine” in terms of volume does not age well, a huge amount of wine still does benefit from aging. And the article is addressed to “directed to the average consumer, that sometime-wine-drinker whose contact with wine is mostly on special occasions and holidays” while the Oenophile’s Quandary relates specifically to Oenophiles. I’m pretty sure the grandparents of the heroine of our comic know that oenophiles run into age-able wines with a great frequency than the “sometimes-wine-drinker”.