Interesting perspective here, stating that none of us really know anything, and we are quite easily duped. I guess this is a good reason why I didn’t ‘wow!’ on every utterance about the Haut-Brion and Lafite tasting notes posted.
Imagine how much time and money we are wasting! 
Well that’s it. I’m done
I replied to this ridiculous article in the comments section below it.
the most obvious scientific experiment here is that you are composing in a ridiculously inaccurate and flaming style to pimp your book. Your assertions are laughably one-sided and lacking any correlative study. I will accept ANY wine tasting challenge you assert would trick me, and can come up with hundreds of others that would pass such tests without fail. Using the results from two isolated tests is meaningless. Here is a test recently performed (this weekend) where individuals were tasting wines from the same Chateau, and correctly identified specific vintages, blind. (posted the notes from the Haut-Brion and Lafite tasting flights from this weekend)
Good luck getting coherent responses to your comment.
Tell the truth, it’s all the Pepsi bashing he does in the lower part of the article that
Is the real issue for you!
Low information journalism just filing in the space where words should exist.
I hate coke.
Wait a minute, there’s an obvious lesson here. And a solution for what to do with all of Rudy’s empties. Just put our wines in them and they will taste much better!
(as in the wonderful idea of “tasting the label” in the Champagne thread)
Actually, there is something to this expectation thing for most people. I did a very non-scientific experiment one day when running the tasting room. I told every group I had that day a different description of the wine and all of them agreed with me. They could have been just being nice but most of them seemed genuine. Sometimes it took a second or third taste to find it but they all found whatever I told them they would taste.
Another time, the winemaker sent me home with two bottles to taste and report back on next time I worked. Both red. Long story short, I tasted what I expected but one was a Chard that had been run through the filter right after the Merlot so was a light red, the other was a cherry wine (we never made fruit wines). In hindsight both were fairly easy to guess. The cherry wine was the easiest but since we did not make a cherry wine, the only answer that made sense was that it was a newer bottling of Pinot.
While I agree the writer’s experiments are flawed, I am also a complete believer that our expectations of a wine may alter our perceptions of it having both seen others do it and experienced it once by accident myself. Price, especially, is very misleading to consumers.
Here’s my experience. I previously posted a tasting note on a Niagara trip where I did a tour and luncheon and was expecting to be served a Jackson-Triggs Riesling icewine with the dessert and so I tasted the pineapple and lemon-lime flavors I was expecting and talked it up to people at my table sure that it was a great Riesling icewine. Only later did I see the empty bottles by chance and see that they were in fact an earlier release of a Vidal icewine.
Rather than embarrass me, however, this actually pleased me when it happened. Now the thing is, when this happened I didn’t suddenly start tasting classic peach and apricot flavors in the icewine once I learned the true identity and declare that the wine just needed to “open up” in order to try and cover up my “error.” I had some more and confirmed I was tasting what I believed I was tasting.
So I informed my table of the true identity of the icewine and told everyone that given how much we all enjoyed it and how close to a Riesling it was, it was a steal at the price they were offering in the store boutique upstairs. Bottles ended up leaving the shelves. And that’s why I get along with wineries so well. 
I think what the writer wrote about says more about people’s perceptions and how expectations play on them than actual wine tasting ability. I could’ve substituted beer, cheese, liquor, anything in such an experiment. I understand why when it comes to price, however. Nobody wants to feel like they’re an idiot who got taken for their money so we will consciously or unconsciously try to justify the high price of things we buy even if the quality is clearly lacking.
I don’t think it is less than universally accepted that casual wine drinkers can’t tell the difference between one and another wine, but the author asserts that ‘experts’ cannot, either, by using two ridiculous tests as proof. I’d love to have a handful of Berserkers do the same thing, even double blind, and see what happens. To say that many of us couldn’t identify which wine was Menage e Trois and which was Chateau Lafleur is just silly.
I agree, although I also believe that built-in bias, romantic notions, emotional attachments, etc. can strongly influence taste perception.
really good comment on the feed
I’m in awe at how much BS is in this article. Can I tell the difference between wines? No, because I don’t drink wine. Put two IPAs in front of me, though, and I’ll not only tell you what brand each is, but what year they were made. And HD vs. Standard Definition? You’ve got to be kidding me.
All it boils down to is experience level and education. Just because some random people couldn’t tell the difference between a pinot noir and a cab doesn’t mean nobody can.
Now we have 3 data points…
Well the thread topic says people can’t tell good wine from bad. And for me that is bs. I may not be able to taste the cream cheese Danish or bramble berries from the boysenberries but I can taste bad wine and tell the difference from the good.
Exactly my point. I dig back 2 days and find another data point that completely contradicts his assertion.
The problem with the article is that the author is using a study conducted on A and applying the results to B without having done the same study twice. Non-wine drinkers likely can’t tell much about a wine other than they like it or not. (NB: for some reason, non-wine geeks think that we, the wine geeks, think this is somehow a bad thing which is absurd. Rumors of our judgmental attitudes have been greatly exaggerated.) Wine geeks, like ourselves, study wine and thus know more about it. Incredibly poor logic to assume that A’s reaction = B’s reaction because they’re both letters.
Part of the problem, is that I don’t see all of the variables eliminated from the study.
A lot of people will tell the experimenter what he/she wants to hear because the social interaction is more important to them than the scientific study going on - they want to please and agree with the person directing the experiment and don’t want to make waves by insisting that there is no difference be tween the wines when the experimenter asks for differences, etc. etc.
If what it appears is true, then this isn’t a study of people’s perception regarding wine and television sets, it is a study of human social interaction. The conclusion being that people would rather get along than engage their perception when their perception could threaten the social interaction.
Having said that, expectation bias absolutely exists and must be eliminated from any credible scientific study.
On the other hand, if this is true, “Expensive wine is like anything else that is expensive, the expectation it will taste better actually makes it taste better.” Then, IMO, this is a good reason for raising one’s expectations. What an easy way to make wine taste better, right?
However, the problem with the study is that the subjects did not buy the wine. If they had and had paid more for one than the other - and - you eliminate the social constraints, then you might have received far different results. The price paid and raised expectations could militate against the perception that the expensive wine was better - or worth the price, etc.
There are thousands of notes on CT that support my point. A quick scan through any random selection of notes will reveal lots of tasters who are disappointed by expensive and highly rated wines.
As has been noted on various threads over the years, expectations can bias results in both directions. In some cases, because the taster “knows” he/she is tasting an expensive wine, that may cause them to rave about the wine more than they would if tasted blind. Conversely, one can be very disappointed to learn that a wine that costs $300 (or whatever) tastes good but not great.
But it is one of the reasons why I like tasting wine completely blind from time to time. I’ve got a blind tasting organized for next weekend, and I’m looking forward to people’s perceptions without their knowing what they are drinking.
Bruce
what is the “theme” of teh blind tasting?
It would move me with this little edit.