Wine tasting notes can be tedious to those of us who don't follow the hobby (or, sport?). From the outside it seems like a lot of pretentious nonsense. Thus, it feels very validating to hear studies about wine connoisseurs failing simple tests. But don't let your anti-intellectualism lead you astray: Although there is certainly plenty of hyperbole in the world of wine, some of those famous "gotcha" studies are flawed.
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Wine is in the palate of the beholder
Just like many fields, wine judging is entirely subjective. Give 10 critics the same book and they will each rate it differently. Have the same critic eat the same meal three different times and they will no doubt give it different marks each time. Wine quality is not an objective measure like a car's MPG rating; there is no right or wrong answer, and the ratings can be affected by the setting, your mood and a whole host of other variables.
Just because the same wine can be ranked differently in a series of blind taste tests, that doesn't throw the entire pastime out the window. Different wines taste different, this is manifestly true. It's not like Diet Coke, where every can literally tastes the same. Which wine tastes best is a subjective matter, certainly, but there is still a world of nuance to explore.
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A study debunked
One of the most widely held-up studies purportedly showed that wine connoisseurs could not tell the difference between a red wine, and a white wine dyed red with food color. However, this study has been cited only once, in a book that received much criticism, and the study itself has been redacted from the Internet.
Writing in the New Yorker, Jonah Lehrer explains that the evidence for the study was the specific words the tasters used to describe the wine. Apparently the researchers never actually asked the subjects, "Is this a red wine or a white wine?" So I think we can consider this particular study debunked.
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Other studies upheld
That being said, due to the subjective nature of wine tasting, it can be easy to deliberately skew the results by changing the presentation. In blind taste tests, a cheap bottle of wine can be ranked higher than a more expensive vintage. Given the choice of the same wine in a cheap bottle versus a classy bottle, many people will say the wine in the more expensive bottle tastes better.
Part of the confusion (to outsiders) is the connection between taste and price. An expensive wine is expensive for a variety of reasons, and not just because it tastes best. It's definitely that you don't have to pay a lot of money to get a great-tasting wine. There are a lot of delicious wines with single-digit price tags. And in blind taste tests, cheap wines often rank as high or higher than more expensive wines.
Several of these "gotcha" studies involved a clear exercise in classism. In one study, wines from traditional French vineyards were pitted against wines from California. To everyone's monocle-popping astonishment, the wines from California were rated more highly. In an entirely different recent blind taste test, the most highly-rated wines in the line-up were - please, I beg of you, hang onto your monocles - NEW JERSEY. Horrified gasp!
This doesn't mean that all wine-tasting is BS. It just means that the wine world is a bunch of snobs who care less about the actual taste of a wine than the perceived nobility of its heritage. The fact that people were shocked that a good wine came out of New Jersey says more about wine snobs than it does about wine.
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Finding good, cheap wine
For most of us, these studies just mean that it's possible to drink delicious wine on a budget. The aforementioned California upset was from Stag's Leap, and you can buy a bottle for $25-$50. The New Jersey wines were from Heritage Vineyards ($10-$20/bottle) and Unionville Vineyards ($15-$30/bottle).
And if that's still too expensive for your budget, Charles Shaw wine (a.k.a. "Two Buck Chuck") from Trader Joe's consistently rates well in blind taste tests. Just be sure to decant it into a more expensive bottle before you try serving it to your guests, otherwise people will be insulted that you only spent $2 on their wine!
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