Anyway, we’ve probably all read or seen the experiments (more like practical jokes) where connoisseurs are tricked into using red-wine adjectives to describe white wine that’s been dyed red, or into praising a cheap wine that’s been poured into a schmancy bottle. It’s pretty impressive to see these things happen.
In general when I’ve read/watched such practical jokes, the author’s conclusion is that there’s no difference between fancy and cheap wine, and that connoisseurs are full of shit. But it seems to me that there’s another possible conclusion: maybe, just maybe, the power of suggestion is powerful. Maybe this has less to do with food science than it has to do with stage magic.
So my question is this: have there been experiments done in which the power of suggestion is removed, in which wine connoisseurs know they’re being tested, and the test is double-blind from unmarked glasses? Almost certainly these experiments have been done. What are the results?
I’ve read three or four different articles by now, and all of them say basically the same thing: in double-blind taste tests, results are wildly inconsistent.
I’ve always suspected connoisseurs are faking, but I lack a sense of smell and therefore can’t judge wine or wine snobs. I agreed with what don’t ask said in the overrated foodstuffs thread:
Sometimes I like to threaten my husband by saying I’m going to make him do a blind taste test on a glass of port vs. a glass of cough syrup. He says they’re different, but I’m not so sure!
The taste tests I’ve seen where they hide the labels tends to show that moderately priced wines can compete with their more expensive counterparts (and there are both excellent and horrible choices in both price categories). The really cheap stuff, however, often didn’t fare well. So yes, knowing that one is tasting an expensive wine is likely to prejudice one to like it better.
They’re not fakers. The take-away from those kinds of tests are, IMHO, that the brain uses many things to determine taste, and the chemical compounds in the thing you’re tasting are not the only variables. Context, history, culture, etc etc all play a real role in what things taste like.
It’s an argument against ideas like “this is absolutely the best/worst” tasting thing. But I find that most thinkers worth listening to these days have embraced the individualness of experience in things of this nature.
First, know that I know jack about wine, so I may have been misled by the film, but in the documentary “Somm,” it appears that people can be trained to tell the difference between various wines, but that it’s really really hard.
Again, the film seems to show people eventually able to identify varietals and regions and all of that, but only with years of study.
I don’t like wine *, but I assume those who drink it actually do like it, and all the mystique and pomp is just added bonus. Why spoil their fun ?
Plus I am sure a $50 bottle will be better than a $2 wine.
Almost certainly, but it might not be any better than a $20 bottle. And, lush that I am, I’d prefer to get three good $16.66 bottles than one good $50, especially considering how unlikely it is that the $50 is three times better than the $16.66.
A year or so ago, I set out to read Modernist Cuisine. If you have the time, you really should, it’s a very enjoyable read.
My favorite bit was the section on wine. The take-away was that you can make a bottle of “two buck chuck” get the ratings of some of the most expensive wines by using a blender and a laboratory grade filter for “hyper-aeration”.
Like you, I don’t enjoy wine, but I am tempted to try some of their experiments.
A couple of years back, my mother had a bottle of champagne that was supposedly really expensive and really fine, and she broke it out for a family dinner. Frankly, I thought it tasted like bubbly vinegar.
When I hear someone talking about “hints of pear and chocolate, with citrus overtones” or whatever they say about certain wines, I’m inclined to think they’re making things up. Maybe not, but it still comes across as hokey to me.
But what do I know - on the rare occasions I have wine, I drink it over ice.
FWIW - I’ve done a blind test for the last two years at my holiday party. I buy three different bottles of the same type of wine (cab sav for example) - I ask the guy at the wine store to pick three bottles that are about equal in “quality” gap differences.
No one knows which is in which bottle (and the first year I poured them from heavily concealed bottles which were labeled A B C - the second year I got empty bottles and repoured them).
They were told that they were the same variety - and their object was to rate from most to least expensive. While most of my friends are wine drinkers - I only have one friend that has actually taken wine tours and I think classes and stuff.
He was fairly confident (even though he is aware of the evidence to the contrary) that he could pick them out. I did make it clear to the wine guy at the store that I wasn’t looking for good deals here - I wanted both the price and the quality to be correlated.
Anyway - I had about a dozen to 18 people each year participate.
By chance you would have a 1:6 chance of getting it right. It wasn’t easy for him, but he correctly guessed each wine both years. No one else got it the first year (which there probably should have been one other if simply due to chance) and my uncle (who admits he knows nothing about wine and just picked the ones he liked best).
My friend had a 1:36 chance getting it right both years. Was it luck - I would have thought so before the test, but I think some people do possess a skill here. I certainly don’t - and neither do any of my other friends.
I feel necessary to point out that he didn’t use just taste or smell - apparently what was the final straw in his last decision (it took him I’d guess about 15 minutes each time to make up his mind) - was that one had more “legs” or something than the other. I think, but am not sure, he was saying he wouldn’t have been able to tell on taste alone.
Anyway - another data point - keep in mind that any study that show that people can tell the difference - are pretty boring - as you’d expect them to be able to.
Also I specifically asked the wine guy to make it so that someone who knew about wine should be able to win the competition - so I don’t know if he threw in stuff like the legs and stuff. If he had picked three bottles at random - the test may have been different.
There was a thread on Stradivarius violins a couple of months. OMG they failed in blind playing/listening tests vs. modern top-tier violins!!!
The point I tried to make there is that when it comes to top-tier instruments, an experienced player can tell what is top-tier, and what fits them best, but saying “oh, yes, that is a rosewood guitar from 193…2!” is not going to happen. The myth that Strads are a whole 'nother level of amazing vs. other top-tier instruments is marketing hype from folks who have sold them.
Similar here: an experienced wine drinker can likely differentiate between Top tier, vs. Mid vs. rotgut. I am not trying to brag, claim expertise or anything, but in general I have done this when my friends and I do blind stuff.
Wine/movie trivia: In the movie Sideways, there’s a scene where Miles and Jack are tasting at “Frass Canyon” vineyards. The inside joke is that frass is insect excrement.
Several years ago I was doing a fair amount of wine experimenting when I was dating someone that was into the whole high-class society stuff. In general, I think I have a pretty good palette, and I could taste the difference between a $5, a $20, and an $80, but in my estimation, even though I generally did enjoy the more expensive ones the most, they weren’t worth the price. The funny thing was, she’d claim to love the more expensive stuff, but if she had no idea what a bottle cost, she’d enjoy it just as much. So I’d often make a quick stop and get a cheap bottle and share it with her, and she was happy.
But when people start using adjectives to describe flavors like “citrusy” and such… I never understood that, and it always just struck me as snobby BS. The only thing that’s ever come close to tasting like citrus, unless the wine had citrus in it, is the acidity, and citrus isn’t anywhere near the first thing I’d use to describe that flavor. I could guess maybe they’re describing bitter when they say “chocolate” but, again, it’s never anywhere close to that flavor for me. I can get something like “Earthy”, but in general, if I’m trying to describe the flavor, I’ll use the actual flavor words unless it DOES taste like something. And, seriously, if you’re tasting chocolate for real, and it’s not chocolate wine, call 911, because you just may be having a stroke.
The citrus/pear/etc. notes are from a limited set of small organic molecules. My friends who went the flavor/scents route are eye-glazing when it comes to conversations about where. We had plenty of blind tasting games that left me convinced. But then again I would expect as much from someone who spends many days with her face at a nose bulb attached to a GC.
