Red wine and white wine

[psycat90]

@Trunk

Definition of factoid: An invented fact that is taken to be true because of its appearance in print.

I don’t know if that applies here, but I will tell you one thing. . .I’ve done numerous blind tastings and I’ve never been confused about which is the red and which is the white. I’ve HEARD that it can be tricky, but at least for the reds and whites I’ve done it on, it’s not even close.

Although, I’ve never had someone give me a white wine with red food coloring in it. I’m really having a hard time figuring out if anyone could be fooled by that, and if this is anything more than a factoid, I’d be interested in seeing a reference.

I’d be interested in seeing a reference to this as well. It’s something I’ve seen tossed around before, and I’ve never had a problem with blind tastings either, and I’m not even an expert. My tasting terms aren’t based on color at all, they’re based on what I smell and taste. For that reason, I’ve spent the last few months increasing my ‘database of smells.’ The more smells I can add to memory, the more terms I can use. (I’ve yet to smell or taste blackcurrant (unless cassis counts), lychee, or gooseberry, terms that I see used often, but mean nothing to me personally.) My deduction of what a wine might be* is *determined partly by color, so I can see how the color being tampered with would throw an expert off of their final conclusion.

Wine and food pairings and conventions weren’t just made willy-nilly.

This is precisely why I try to follow certain guidelines such as matching (and sometimes contrasting) weight, texture, sweetness, acidity, etc. The guidelines were created for a reason.

My absolute favorite website that explains the science behind wine and food pairings is this one, which I am pretty sure I have linked to before. It’s very detailed, yet clear and precise.

But still the bottom line remains, drink what you like, eat what you like.

[Lionne]

As it turns out, I’ve been invited to a wine tasting next weekend! Perhaps I’ll find something that I enjoy besides sweet white.

I feel like I’ve come away from the thread far more knowledgeable about wine types than before.

[mrklutz]

Life’s too short to go by what people tell you that you should like. I’ll agree with Trunk that wine pairings aren’t made willy-nilly, but in the end it all comes down to personal taste. If you like Thunderbird with your filet mignon, then by Og, hold that brown bag high!

I tend to prefer full-bodied reds myself – a zinfandel, cab, or rioja. For lighter dishes, I’ll drink a lighter red like a tempranillo, but seldom a white. There just aren’t that many white wines I get excited about.

[psycat90]

Neat-o. I ended up finding the research study e-logic referenced earlier on my own, and it is indeed exactly as described.

If I read it correctly the test was conducted using 54 undergrads from the ‘Faculty of Oenolgy of the University of Bordeaux.’ Wine critics or experts? Hhhmmmmm, well, OK. Surely they must have more experience and knowledge than the average joe picking up a case of Night Train, but they aren’t Masters of the field either.

A brief summary of the study:

To test this hypothesis we elaborated the following experimental schema: 54 subjects were invited to a series of two experiments in which they had to comparatively describe a real red wine and a real white wine. Some days later the same subjects had to comparatively describe, in their own words, the same white wine and a red-coloured white wine. The neutrality, from an olfactory and gustative point of view, of the colouring was controlled during another test. What the subjects see during the first as in the second experiment is a glass of white wine and a glass of red wine. What in fact is in the glasses during the first experiment a glass of red wine and a glass of white wine whereas during the second there were two glasses of identical white wine, except from the point of view of colour. In question was the perception of the subjects. The results are presented in the following figure.
RESULTS
Olfactory and gustative terms
54 subjects
red
white The real red wine was described from an olfactory and gustative point of view in classical red wine terms. Whereas the white wine was described in usual white wine terms during this first experiment.
In a similar fashion the white wine of the second experiment was described with white wine terms, this opposed to the same white wine coloured red. The Chi test carried out on the descriptions permitted the affirmation that the subjects described the two wines of the colour red in an identical fashion whereas one of them presented the aromas of a white wine. On the contrary the presence of the colour red in the white wine reversed the description of its descriptive parameters.
In this experiment the perception of fragrance and taste conformed therefore to colour. This phenomena has been the object of an abundant literature (Maga, 1974, Dubose, 1980, Davis, 1981, Johnson, 1982, Zellner and Kautz, 1990 in the food processing field; and in the wine field (André, 1970, Williams, 1984). The principal conclusions of this work have also been practical: colourless syrups have disappeared from the market.

Sorry, but all of that information was pertinent. For anyone really interested there are much more detailed reports (both pdfs) here and here.
And a much more reader friendly report on CNNMoney.com

Very interesting. I’m so curious now, I want to tell my husband to try and do this to me sometime in the future. Maybe we’ll do something like this in one of my classes. I might bring it up with one of my professors.
I don’t think what I smell and taste in wine is influenced by the color, I really do rely heavily on my memory of scents, but perhaps it is. I must try this. I will drink more wine in the name of science! Yes, that’s it.

And that last line hits home with me. We bought my kids green ketchup a few years ago. We each used it a couple of times, then stopped putting ketchup on our burgers, then finally threw the stuff away, we just couldn’t stand to eat (look at) it.

[Wallenstein]

Hey, nice find Psycat90!

I’d heard this study referenced, but was unsure of its exact conclusions (hence my reference to “factoid” )

There’s another study here:

The nose knows: influence of colour on perception of wine aroma
Journal of Wine Research
December 2003

which appears to draw similar - albeit softer - conclusions.

Key points:

The task simulated a wine-evaluation situation where colour and aroma were open to evaluation by visual and olfactory senses.

1. Experts were able to discriminate white wines that had been masked with colour to simulate an aged white wine and a red wine, although they did succumb to a degree of colour-induced olfactory bias.

That is, experts’ aroma judgements on the white wine that was coloured red were more accurate when the wine was presented in opaque glasses than when presented in clear glasses.

2. Social drinkers found the task extremely difficult, demonstrating indiscriminate behaviour in some conditions.

3. The data suggest that wine experts do indeed differ cognitively from novices in their approach to evaluating wine aroma.

So it suggests that no-one’s immune, but that it’s easier to fool social drinkers than experienced wine critics (which is as you’d expect).

Still, I imagine there were some embarassed soi-disant “wine experts” at the end of the study!