Why We Can't Tell Good Wine From Bad

WINE TALK
1

Interesting piece in The Atlantic: 'You Are Not So Smart': Why We Can't Tell Good Wine From Bad - The Atlantic

2

Robert - thanks for the link.

Bossuet : The greatest disorder of the mind is to believe that things are so because we wish them to be so.

3

Great article. I’ve always been really interested in the psychology of marketing and influencing perception. This addresses it on several levels.
As noted, the participants in the dyed-red-wine experiment were influenced by their perception of the wine color. But this makes me want to break out my black tasting glasses and conduct some testing, as I’ve always been told it can be wickedly tough (with some wines) to differentiate the color with the visiual cues hidden. And even if you can segregate the wine by color, infinitely tougher to determine variety when you can’t see depth of color, hues, etc.

4

No doubt that perceptions and expectations influence our impressions of wine, but people
really can tell good wine from bad.

One anecdotal point in opposition:
Last night we had open two Oregon PNs. One was an expensive bottle from a winery I usually love.
The wines were not tasted blind.
It just did not make the grade, lacked real Pinot character and had practically no finish.
One friend who is not by any means a connoisseur greatly preferred the other entry level wine.
Later I checked Cellartracker notes, and consensus overwhelmingly agreed with our impressions.

P Hickner

5

No point in arguing with the article. If the tests were conducted correctly, then they got the results they reported.

One bit irked me:

“Vodka, for instance, has no flavor. So advertisers can’t sell you on how great it tastes.”

I’ve never done double blind vodka tastings, and I probably couldn’t always pick out the pricey-est brand, but there are differences. Based on flavor.

[scratch.gif]

6

I once saw a show (Dateline?) where they took 6 or so regular vodka drinkers. About 4 said their favorite was Grey Goose.

Grey Goose finished next to last and the cheapest was at or near the top.

While that little “test” doesn’t necessarily mean anything, I do think vodka is pretty hard to tell apart.

7

Based on falvor or based on how smooth the vodka was?

I’m playing Devil’s advocate here. I went through a vodka phase and tasted through countless vodkas. If you want to make a quick and obvious argument that vodkas taste different, try a grey goose on the rocks next to a ketel one on the rocks. Their flavor profiles are very different.

8

“…but this time they put the tasters in a brain scanner. While tasting the wine, the same parts of the brain would light up in the machine every time”

I work in MRI research and I think I need to work for Caltech instead if they are doing wine tasting brain function scanning. So jealous!

9

I say we add a blind test to the Telluride Ski/Wine/Dine Festival!!

10

I dunno if skiing blind is such a good idea

11

Bob,

When UNC beats State College and dook this year, it will not be a matter of perception. neener [stirthepothal.gif]

12

“In blind taste tests…wine connoisseurs have a hard time telling $200 bottles from $20 ones.” So few are willing to consider, let alone test the concept. Black glasses are informative with respect to how one tastes. It’s disconcerting being stripped of the preconceptions and security derived from reading the labels and seeing the wines.

RT

13

When I served a Drouhin Beaune Clos de Mouches and a Drouhin Oregon Pinot blind to a bunch of Burgundy lovers, they all got it right. There are also a good number of people who do well in blind tastings. How does this article explain that? Does this phenomenon only occur when you are being deceived but not when you are being served blind and concentrate?

14

The article simply makes the rather obvious point that we tend to believe what we’re told, that we use all of the available information when evaluating things and that we are easily gulled. If I tell someone that a wine is DRC when it’s merely a very good Pinot they’ll probably give it more of the benefit of the doubt if they are Burg geeks who know how good DRC should be. Same thing with critic scores… if you taste a wine and it’s OK but nothing special, then you’re told it’s rated 98 points people will tend to assume that they are missing something because a recognized expert rated the wine highly.

So?

15

Preaching to the choir with this article and post. A lot of those studies have been mentioned elsewhere, particularly Goldstein’s The Wine Trials. (Goldstein overstates his case, but a lot of the evidence is compelling on its own.)

The more important question is whether the professional critics are performing a valuable service. It’s evident that their approach allows for too much bias for their reviews to be a test of quality, even in the context of their palates. But isn’t wine collecting mostly about context? I don’t go after price and points much, but often I will buy a wine because it is a region or variety of interest. Even when there are readily available wines at a comparable price that I know are as good if not better. For the price and point score followers, this mindset is amplified.

16

A quick impression from a single tasting can be misleading – for all of the reasons given above.

I’d like to see someone repeat the test with a significant amount of time to judge the wine. Multiple tastings over several days. And a comparison of 2 wines of different pedigrees at 10 years of age, 20 years of age, and 30 years of age.

Now that would be a much more interesting study.

17

Howard, your pairing is a start. A broader range of blind options might yield different results. Some days I’m on and some days way off. I expect the same is true of those you say “do well” at blind tastings. Concentration may not be enough to stop even experienced tasters from incorrectly guessing that a well-made OR Pinot or Tuscan red or Beaujolais are from the Cote D’Or. Although one goal might be “getting it right” in terms of general IDs, blind tasting provides an opportunity to assess your own preferences minus a good deal of conscious (and likely unconscious) bias. I’m definitely not advocating blind tasting as the best way to evaluate wines. It’s a very useful tool.

RT

18

They did a bit on Mythbusters about vodka and it included a blind tasting of a top shelf vodka with a crappy vodka filtred through a water filter, the local expert did pretty well : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kO077nu2m5E.

19

Richard, I agree with you that I don’t consider blind tasting as the best way to evaluate wines and I do know that we all label drink. All of us. Also, the two Drouhin wines were very easy to tell apart. I think most board members (at least those familiar with Burgundy and Oregon Pinot) would have done the same pretty easily.

But, if served blind and not tricked, I expect that most board members would be able to tell a cheap wine from an expensive wine (assuming that the cheap wine is not that good and the expensive wine is good - I recognize that this is not always the case). So, either the tasters in the article are much less experienced that are board members (which is possible) or there is something about being told a wine is x that will influence us. Where we can tell one from the other blind, but somehow are accepting if we expect the wine to be good - e.g., a cheap wine is mediocre if it does not taste good, a wine from a producer that we like is just closed, etc.

20

About 20 years ago, I was given 2 Irish whiskeys blind (as were several others). I was able to tell the better one while others were not and I think the difference is I was looking for something different from what they were. The cheaper whiskey had less flavor (more innocuous tasting and smoother in a way). The more expensive whiskey was richer, had more to it and was probably a bit harsher). They went for smooth, I went for more flavors. I have had this happen in wine tastings also. Some people at work (also a long time ago) were tasting 3 BV Private Reserves and 1 Beautour blind. The Beautour was a nice smooth wine but had less to it than the Private Reserves. A lot of people picked the the Beautour as one of the expensive wines and the youngest PR, which was tannic and thus a bit rough, as the cheaper wine.