Real science this time - improve wine with your thought patterns

Here’s a summary of the story:

The experiment was run on California Cab, “of the quality one might serve at a dinner party amongst good friends, pleasantly palatable but not lastingly memorable.”

The researcher asked a party host to invite seven people to taste two wines and then to stick around for a party. He said a friend was considering buying several cases of wine, was down to the two choices, and wanted to find out which was preferred. The wines were in carafes so there were no labels, capsules, etc. In other words, it was all down to simple tasting.

But there was a trick!

Both carafes contained the same wine.

But one wine had been the target of intense meditation!

The researcher contacted a local spiritual organization for assistance. At home, he poured the wine into identical carafes and then put each of those in a styrofoam sleeve and drove to the meditation center. He took the two carafes into the house and put them in different rooms.

The groups would have a discussion and then close the meeting with meditation. When it was time to meditate, the researcher fetched one of the carafes, took it out of the styrofoam sleeve, and put on a table or chair in the middle of the room. The group was told: “Please dedicate your meditation to holding the intention that this bottle of wine is improved during the course of the meditation.”

The wine was then subject to 20-30 minutes of intense meditation.

After the meditation, the researcher thanked the meditators, put the carafe back in its sleeve, and put it back in the car, but he separated from the control carafe by placing one in the front seat and the other in the back seat.

This rigor and attention to detail is what makes the experiment so compelling.

The meditation sessions were usually Wednesday or Thursday and the tasting was Friday or Saturday.

The person hosting the party was not told about the meditation sessions and didn’t know which wine was treated and which was the control.

Over four years, he organized twelve wine tastings. In eleven of the tastings, the majority of tasters preferred the treated wine.

Clearly there are some flaws in the study. For example, we don’t know if the wine would be better if it were consumed directly after the meditation, or whether the thought waves had to integrate over a day or so.

And we don’t know if it would work with French wine.

If you want to read the original, it requires a subscription or $12 for the article.

https://www.explorejournal.com/article/S1550-8307(18)30066-1/fulltext

Water, Wine and the Sacred, an Anthropological View of Substances Altered by Intentioned Awareness, Including Objective and Aesthetic Effects

This paper discusses the ancient anthropological linkage of water and wine with sacred rituals after these substances have been the focus of nonlocal perturbation. The paper reports the changes produced can be both physical, as well as a subjective aesthetic reaction arising when individuals have a sensorial interaction with such treated substances. In making this argument the paper presents and discusses research done by others, as well as the author including reporting the results of a 12 part series of experiments in which groups of seven people tasted wine from one 750 ml bottle that had been decanted into two identical 375 ml carafes. The histories of the carafes were the same except that one, before the tasting, had been the focus of intentioned awareness by meditators, while the other was a control. Twelve sessions were conducted, 11 resulted in a majority preferring the treated wine, and one resulted in a tie. Using an exact binomial test, the p-value is Math Eq. Therefore, with 95% confidence we can say that the probability that a majority would prefer the treated wine is at least 0.76. The paper in its conclusion discusses the implications of the totality of this research.

Carrie cast a spell on wine A, but not wine B. Sure enough, even though they were the same wine, everybody preferred Carrie’s spelled wine.

… From the same bottle? Or two or more mixed prior to pouring? What did they do with the wines during the 2-3 days in between? Was this the kind of wine which would be worth opining on after that time in a carafe anyhow? Probably a few more questions for this rigorous study…

It’s the thought patterns man! Your negative vibes are going to ruin the wine!

There are some curious details in the experiment. Why not label the carafes, put them both on the table, and get the team to meditate on one of them, without telling the experimenter which one had been selected until after the tasting? And then drive the carafes back in the same part of the car. And why not do the statistics on each taster individually, rather than on the majority view of each group? Of course, if it was a narrow majority in each case, that would have made it a lot less likely to get statistical significance.

It’s also rather bizarre that the experiment took FOUR YEARS to complete!

From the Wikipedia article on the journal:

Explore has been heavily criticised both for the content it publishes and the beliefs of its editorial team. Its self-description and author information explicitly includes pseudoscientific topics well outside the mainstream of medical practice. Critics have noted this willingness to publish work in areas lacking a scientific basis, and have labelled it a “quack journal” which “doesn’t limit itself to just one quackery, the way [the journal] Homeopathy does,” a publisher of “truly ridiculous studies,” and as a “sham masquerading as a real scientific journal.”

I can’t believe I’m responding seriously to this.

I’m not paying $12 to get the details, but before even bothering to look for methodological flaws, I would want to know if the result was random. For that, I’d need to know:
How many tasters?
What were the votes?
What statistical analysis was done?

Also, is styrofoam known to block the effects of meditation? I thought tin foil was required for that. So there’s a major methodological flaw right there!

Look up Explore: The Journal of Science and Healing on Wikipedia.

-Al

Obvious explanation, and nothing to do with meditation: it’s the difference in travel shock between riding in the front seat vs. back seat. Scientific research these days is really slipping.

I was at a tasting once and two couples each brought the same wine.

I tasted the first couple’s wine and it was fine. The second couple’s was corked. I asked the second couple, “Did you guys have an argument on the way over?”

They had, in fact, argued and said they had been considering splitting up.

The crowd drew the obvious and unassailable connection between the tasting results and their argument and decided the wine had been tainted by the conflict and became “divorce corked.”

My wife disagreed, saying they had come to a pour conclusion. I just sat there with a blanc look on my face.

Your wife’s sparkling intuition was spot on!

Alan and David - you bring up some interesting points. I wonder what would have happened had he wrapped the carafe in tin foil and then placed the wrapped carafe in front of the meditators. And AFIK, the effects of styrofoam were not considered but perhaps they had an insulating effect? Same as the front and back seat experience - if it was not buckled in up front, that may have actually been the key to the one wine getting the worse result, although I do believe he was careful enough to switch them up. But it’s a valid criticism.