The OP’s link does not “prove” that wine tasting is rubbish. What it proves is that you can trick people, even experts, by fucking with their expectations. That’s not news. It’s also not science.
Master sommeliers and wine makers take their craft very seriously, devoting untold hours of study and practice to refining their skills, which are real. A real master somm—under fair conditions, blind tasting yes but without infantile trickery like dying white wine red—can identify varietal, region, and yes even sometimes winery and vintage of wine from anywhere in the world; not 100% by any means by to a degree of accuracy that would astonish you.
I’m friends with several professional wine makers, and I sometimes test them for fun by asking them to ID what’s in my glass, from a reasonably limited subset (e.g. I’ll tell them it’s a Bordeaux blend from the Columbia Valley AVA). They usually can tell me completely accurately which varietal it is purely from looking at it, judging color and viscosity, and smelling it. They often can also tell me exactly what winery or (more likely for winemakers) or vineyard it came from.
The ability to do this is real.
I myself have occasionally been able to identify correctly the varietals in a red blend, and identify (for example) things like Rhône versus Bordeux, in blind testing. I definitely can’t do it anything like 100% of the time, though. The reason is simple, and the same reason why experts can be confused: the complex results from fermented grapes of even single varietal from a single block from a single vineyard can have remarkably wide range. “Wine is weird.” There are hundreds of compounds in wine that affect its taste.
But here’s the thing: this isn’t news. Any real professional or genuine oenophile knows this. It is well-known, and perfectly above board, that there is as much or more art to wine-making as there is science. And this is, in fact, a good thing! More on that later.
The OP’s link doesn’t prove things such as people can’t tell white wine from red wine. Of course you can. My guess is if the people being tested had been told in advance of just the mere possibility of tricks—such as the several glasses in a row of the same wine, or the dyed white wine—you would have seen some very different results.
What does the OP link prove? That you can trick people by fucking with their expectations. That the power of suggestion is real. That people judge by appearances. Even experts. Here’s the thing: you can do this with anything that involves human senses.
Big fucking deal.
People judge books by their covers. People judge character by how pretty a face is, or how nice the person’s clothes are. People judge the quality of the taste of fruit by all kinds of things that have little or nothing to do with how fresh it actually is. People judge how good food tastes by its presentation. The power of suggestion can radically alter anyone’s perception of something they are eating.
Tell a group of people that what they’re eating contains MSG, even if it doesn’t. Tell them that MSG has been scientifically linked to bowel irritation and migraines (false! this isn’t true!) See what happens. You know what would happen. A lot of people would suddenly be complaining about upset stomachs and headaches.
Yes, people judge wine by its presentation. And its cost. And how nice the label is. And whether the person serving the wine is attractive. And whether the setting where they are consuming the wine is beautiful. And whether they’re feeling happy or sad that day. And on any number of random things that may or may not have anything to do with the actual chemical makeup of the wine.
Again I say: bug fucking deal.
Oenophiles know this. I know it. Wine makes know it. Master sommeliers know it.
I know that all the things I listed above—and I can add to the list things like what I had for breakfast, whether I brushed my teeth or not, or who the fuck knows what else—all influence my perception of the taste of wine.
It’s a big part of the fun. And that’s not a secret. Wine is fun: it’s mysterious and strange and enjoying it happens more with the imagination than any rational, intellectually sound chemical analysis. If you want only the latter, go drink cheap vodka.
The imagination and irrationality of wine (again, this perfectly above board and well known to any real oenophile or professional in the industry) mean that yes, it might be possible that I could be tricked, or even scammed. You could, theoretically, set up a beautiful tasting room, hire gorgeous yet knowledgeable people to be servers, dress up shabby cheap wine in elegantly labelled bottles with descriptions as purple and fruity as any snob with a wild imagination could compose, and be able to scam a few people by charging ludicrous prices for it. Maybe you’d be able to scam me. Maybe even experts. But not for long. You would be found out.
If I’m wrong, I challenge one of the “skeptics” in this thread to prove it. Make a profit for a single year, doing as I describe above. Let us know how it goes. You won’t succeed.
Part of the reason you won’t succeed is that in order to establish those prices you would need to establish literally decades of credibility. Good luck doing that without putting in some truly, insanely hard work.
So the final question. Cost is separate from the chemicals in wine. If it affects how one perceives wine, does that invalidate the whole profession? Of course not.
My brain processes what I’m tasting. The brain uses a lot of information, some of it very useful, like smell and appearance, and some more irrational, like how much it costs, to come up with whether I enjoy the taste of the wine. If cost is part of the equation, does that invalidate my enjoyment? Absolutely not. If my brain says I’m enjoying this wine, then I’m enjoying it. Period.
It’s useful to be aware of the possibility of scams. There are con men out there. Some perhaps even using wine. But in general, the overwhelmingly majority of wine that is very expensive is so because of decades, or even centuries, of establishing credibility, consistency, complexity.
People who haven’t developed their palates might not be able to tell. People have developed their palates might still be scammable, perhaps by people posing as scientists running tests full of trickery. The world is built on trust, sadly some people abuse it.
But wine tasting is not BS.
) The plastic seal preserves freshness better than corks or even plastic bottle caps, too.