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> I asked them what sample attribute had the highest correlation with sales and without even hesitating they told me it was sugar content.

This was the cause of a big scandal back in the 1980s when it was discovered that some Austrian winemakers were adding antifreeze to their wines. The wines are tested for their sugar content, but diethylene glycol has a sweet test and wouldn't be detected on standard chemical tests for sugar. Unscrupulous winemakers began adding the chemical to their wines to make them taste sweeter and boost sales.



"Chateau Scam 2014: Italy’s Weird World of Wine Fraud" https://www.thedailybeast.com/chateau-scam-2014-italys-weird...


So that’s why it happened. I’d heard about the event but not the reason so I always assumed it had been some sort of contamination, or related to wine preservation. But no it was straight up devs bypass?


Adding sugar to wine is considered a great offense, and is not only illegal in France, but a disagrace. Still, some winemaker wake up in the middle of the night to do it in secret because it's hard to get a sweet taste or more alcohol naturally. Therefor, the anti-freeze workaround is not surprising.


> Adding sugar to wine is considered a great offense, and is not only illegal in France, but a disagrace.

That's not true. Adding sugar is even part of some AOP. It's used to regulate the amount alcohol in the finish product.


It was a simplification on my part. If you want to be precise, then chaptalisation (the process of regulating alcohol quantity using sugar) is illegal in south of France vineyards, forbidden everywhwere when mixed with acidification processes, and allowed but under very strict conditions otherwise in "septentrionales" vineyards (which I have no idea how to translate in English).


> and allowed but under very strict conditions otherwise in "septentrionales" vineyards (which I have no idea how to translate in English).

Northern / northerly?


> a sweet test ... chemical tests

Assuming this isn’t just an autocorrect issue, is there a word for this phenomenon of writing an incorrect but similar word that’s also on your mind? It happens to me with annoying frequency.


Should have coded your brain in Rust, then you wouldn't have these sort of unsafe concurrent memory-access problems


Dude, my brain is already rusty enough.


Freudian slip or parapraxis?




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