Important If True 52: "Yeah, You Email It."

[Problem Machine]

THATS WHAT IM SAYING

[RubixsQube]

On the subject of the Wine, I think that the hosts (and the conversation here) have mostly been focused on this poor sommelier and their family. I think we may be missing something crucial about the sommelier's task.

 

The wine is originally described as "tasting twice as good" each year. Well, the thing about the senses is that they are not linear, but logarithmic. If you take two light bulbs and place them next to each other, it does not look "twice as bright," for instance. You can read some more about this here, from a 2013 issue of Significance, put out by the Royal Statistical Society. 

 

This means that if the wine is "twice as good" from one year to the next, it is actually something like 10^(2^t) times increased in raw quality (flavor intensity, say). I say "something" because it may not be logarithmic with a base 10, but if it were, then the flavor intensity of the wine would then be:

 

When you get the wine, Flavor Intensity = 10, Wine Taste = 1

One Year Later, Flavor Intensity = 100x, Wine Taste = 2x

One Year Later, Flavor Intensity = 10,000x, Wine Taste = 4x

One Year Later, Flavor Intensity = 100,000,000x, Wine Taste = 8x

etc etc etc

 

So, if the flavor was made more intense by "notes", the sommelier's job would be suddenly profoundly difficult, in a way that not even a large family could surmount.