Uncorked 3D: Visualizing Taste

This will be the third talk in what has become a series of lightning talks based upon the the author and her spouse’s data-driven quest to drink better wine. Since 2007, my husband and I have been recording our wine tasting notes and associated metadata (grape variety, vintage, origin, producer, etc.) in order to create a dataset that has enabled us to better understand our preferences and make more informed choices when confronted with new bottles at stores or restaurants. Building upon the previous two lightning talks, this talk will explore the depth of the data to a greater degree. While the talk in Australia was adequate, the author realized during later discussions that the two-dimensional format of a slide-driven talk wasn’t conveying the depth and breath of information that needed to be considered when thinking about wine. It was there that the idea began to grow for a revised talk that would focus on an interactive web-based data visualization, giving my audience the chance to turn the data over for themselves while I shared the insights we had found most helpful. Rendering the data in this way will both allow this talk to explore more of the complexity present in the data as well as provide my audience the chance to dig into information for themselves and hopefully find new insights that they can share with me.