I'm able to infer your emotional state because you Italicize, use redundant language for emphasis and assume this conversation may have no useful outcome.

Then I assume you have some well-documented evidence, published in reliable journals, that backs up these techniques? I'll state here and now that I am highly skeptical that one can infer someone else's internal emotional state based on how that person writes a message on an anonymous forum. Even if you were sitting in the same room with me I doubt you have the ability to accurately infer anything of my internal emotional state. If even we were having a conversation the best you can do is to infer that I, being a human, have emotions. But the nature of those emotions and the claim of knowing that someone else is "being emotional" is the worst kind of magical thinking. Unfortunately you didn't stop there.

I disagree; this conversation can be perfectly useful.

Absolutely no way. I base this on everything you've said so far in this thread.

I think on one matter we come from a point of intrinsic difference. Based on some remarks in this last post, it seems that you don't believe a product may be objectively superior to another product. I do say that one product's superiority may be authoritatively established above another.

Just so we both understand what it means to make the claim that something is objectively better than something else means that the two subjects under investigation have certain properties, as described by human language, reflecting human ideas and concepts, that inhere those very same subjects. How our ideas inhere objects and what is the nature of that relationship is not something that can be easily dismissed. In fact it is the very basis of your argument. If you cannot provide a complete model describing this very phenomenon then your entire thesis is doomed to failure even before you begin. But let's soldier on assuming that you'll be able to provide such an explanation.

I may never be able to convince you of that position, but that doesn't mean the conversation isn't useful.

No, trust me, this conversation is useless.

However, when one product's process is based on less knowledge and less care than another's, then there is an objective quality difference.

See how you tried to sneak an extra assumption in there? I might be willing to agree that differences in knowledge and approach to process will lead to an "objective" difference. Even within the realm of my serious philosophical skepticism, I can allow that this idea at least has a useful meaning. But! And the rub, is that you didn't stop there. You threw in the word "quality". Not sure if you were being deliberately sneaky or not. You took one claim that is benign enough that even I could agree with it and then attempted to squeeze in another conclusion not yet supported by any argument.

In other words, that two things are made differently does not mean that "quality" is an objective property even if their differences are an objective property!

So Tempus Fugit Spirits makes objectively superior Creme de Cacao for instance, because they attempt to.

Another assumption. Quality is determined by the process of creation. You have yet to establish this as fact. Nor have you established why it matters. Nor how it affects taste, if you claim it does, and whether that sensation of taste is objective (i.e., the same for everyone). So far the only the only thing you can speak to with regard to the quality of each product is how each one is made, you have yet to establish that our experience of those products, made in such vastly different ways, affects our perception of the "quality" of those products. But again, to solider on ...

Tempus Fugit Spirits, however, is strictly concerned with reproducing the highest quality distillation procedures, and preserving historical knowledge of distillation which might otherwise be lost to time and Prohibition.

So? If starting to tomorrow the homeless dude living underneath the bridge starts making a violette liqueur that tastes better than Tempus's then it matters not one whit what process Tempus uses! Unless your entire concern is limited to the nature of the process.

Rothman & Winter's violets are called Queen Charlotte and March, and rather than any specific location the Source location is generalized as the Alps which in terms that distillers use is a very large area.

I hate to say "citation needed", but how can you possibly know the range from which Rothman harvests their violets or the affect that this has on the "quality" of those violets? I found the same fact sheet you probably used for this claim of yours and that was about the extent of the details they gave (except that this recipe goes back three generations which has got to speak to the quality of the product by your standards of quality, right? I mean how many generations of Tempusites have been making this same liqueur? If it's less than three then I think we can agree that this means, objectively speaking, that Tempus is the inferior product. Or are there some more assumptions about your definition of quality that you haven't revealed to us yet?). Unless you do have a better source then this entire line of reasoning on your part is completely baseless.

You have jumped to a wild conclusion based on flimsy evidence and drawn from that another conclusion. Not to mention the fact that you are assuming that that one statement does in fact mean that they harvest their violets from the entire area of the Alps and does not, in fact, mean a few select areas that happen to be in the Alps and preserve the makers' obsession with Terroir. In fact it might be that their attention to detail exceeds that of Tempus's as you have not proven that it doesn't. You've concluded this but not without any compelling evidence to back up that assertion.

This means that they have no specific interest in Terroir

I'm beginning to see a pattern. You take an objective fact and jump to conclusions about the mental states and intentions of other people. And yet you have provided no scientific justification for that leap. Just as you cannot possibly know what my internal mental and emotional states are, you certainly cannot possibly know the internal mental states of people you have never met or conversed with. (If you have talked to the producers of Rothman's at length then this would affect this particular rebuttal of mine but not the overall thrust of my attack).

But even if they don't care about where their violets come from this does not mean that our experience of the final product has to be worse than the experience that accompanies Tempus's!

Its colour comes from an intense dye which is for most people the main attraction of the drink. It is aimed at people more interested in making the drink Purple than making the drink taste like violets,

Again, your knowledge of other peoples' intentions is staggering ...

as noticeably its aromas are so minor that when mixed into an Aviation it is necessarily overpowered by the flavour of Gin and may not be appreciated

The aromas come through just fine for me and I use what I consider a modest amount (.25oz. for 1.5oz. of gin). Perhaps something is wrong with your taste buds. But what would that do to your claims for objective knowledge of taste?

But even if Tempus's aroma/flavor is stronger than Rothman's why does this automatically make it superior? Perhaps something more subtle is best! Maybe Tempus is gaudy and flashy like all those crappy flavored vodkas that crappy bars serve. Maybe, if the people at Tempus understood better the concept of balance and restraint they would have a product that blended well with gin and lemon juice and maraschino liqueur instead of overpowering the other flavors.

You have yet to establish that this alternate explanation isn't just as "objectively" correct as your preferred one.

I don't feel that I'm in any way on a high horse when I believe I may determine the objective superiority of a product based on the use of objectively superior techniques.

Oh, you are on a high horse. You have claims to special knowledge like: what other people think and feel and why they do the things they do, that there are objective truth statements of quality that you have access to, and that your experience of a product establishes the objective quality of that product that we must all experience the same way and draw the same conclusions from.

Now it's easier for me, being a philosophical skeptic, to spend all day questioning your statements, but if you're going to assert claims to Objective Truth then it is upon you to make sure you can ground all those claims in facts not reliant on any other assumptions whatsoever.