
Why We Can't Tell Good Wine From Bad (2011) - JumpCrisscross
http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2011/10/you-are-not-so-smart-why-we-cant-tell-good-wine-from-bad/247240/#
======
Udo
I _can_ tell good wine from bad, I just can't tell the expensive from the
inexpensive.

The expectations game is played by pretty much every single product on the
market, but it's only working if the product image is something you _choose_
to care about. Most people do choose to care about it simply because it serves
as a reasonable filter and this combined with social proof can reduce the
problem of choice with minimum effort. People choose a certain "class" they
want to represent and they just go along with whatever is on the menu for it.

But it's also important to notice that, while we all might be doing it to
varying degrees, this does not necessarily apply to everything you do. If you
can live with the stigma of forceful association to these classes, you can
make decisions purely on the personal merits of a product, though that doesn't
mean it's always worth the effort.

I live in one of the wine-themed states of Germany, close to France. A
significant amount of our agriculture is wine, mostly from small family-based
winemakers (oh the cliché). Everybody drinks a lot of wine, and there is an
_insane_ amount of variants to choose from. I know what I like when I taste
it, but I know this applies to my personal taste only. Like the article says,
it's not really possible to tell how expensive a wine is by tasting it. But
that doesn't mean it all tastes the same. Wines are hugely diverse and
everyone would be well-advised to just decide based on personal preference.
However, high-profile wines are often designed to offend the least number of
people, so they're an easy choice to serve when you're hosting a dinner - as a
common denominator they do have a purpose.

~~~
tcbawo
I imagine the first X covers cost of production, where cheapo brands cut
corners to satisfy the quantity crowd. After that, you start to see price
heavily affected by market segmentation, and availability. The small batch
shop need to sell above a certain price. At some point, it starts to mirror
high fashion or art.

~~~
ahoyhere
This may be true in the US but it's not true in Germany and Austria.

In Vienna, you can get a very tasty bottle of local white wine for $3, at any
grocery store. Spend $10 and you'll have something amazing. It'll be fresh,
crisp, and tasty. You can get giant jugs of wine for $15 or less, again local,
again delicious. Maybe not what an expert would consider wonderful, but
nothing like the sickly cheap whites you get in the US. (At least, all the
ones I've tried.) In many restaurants in Austria, the house wine is the
cheapest beverage other than tap water and single espresso.

The thing is wine is both a bigger industry, and a smaller industry, compared
to the US. It seems like half the restaurants in Vienna have a house wine (and
I don't just mean "their cheap brand" -- but house wine they, or their family,
or their friends, make and sell).

There are practically infinite "brands" because making wine is such a
tradition. And yet it's not super commercialized. Most of the time you go to a
restaurant, you just order "white" or "red". With few exceptions, there's not
the worshipping of the brand names or prices.

Heuriger are a kind of biergarten, but for wine; they make their own, that's
all they serve to drink, and often you can dine among the grape vines that
provide the grapes to make the wine you're drinking.

In the summer, you drink weissweing'spritzt… wine with soda water, with
Almdudler (a local herbal soda), apple juice, or elderflower syrup and soda.
You order the wine to the table by the liter (it's not coming in bottles), and
you share with your friends. This would send a snobby wine aficionado into
conniptions and I myself thought it was a bit sketchy at first, but damn, it's
delicious (and fun - and cheap).

Every fall, sturm arrives in every lokale -- the fresh, immature wine.
Suddenly everybody is selling it and everybody's drinking it (and everybody's
got a raging headache the next day).

Wine is part of the cultural landscape there in a way that I've not seen
anywhere in the US. Wine is practically like hot & cold running water in
Austria -- practically a utility. It's omnipresent and, in true socialist
fashion, cheap enough for everyone, all the time.

------
matwood
I can recognize good wine versus bad wine. The problem is expensive doesn't
always equal good. Often the more expensive aged wine doesn't taste very good
to someone who doesn't drink much wine because it's generally very dry.

There's also the matter of degrees. Going from the $1 bottle to the $10 bottle
is a huge jump in quality and taste. Going from a _good_ $10 bottle to the
$50+ and the changes end up very subtle and not worth the money IMHO. I'm not
a wine expert and when I had $1000 bottle before I felt it was mostly wasted
on me since I have a hard time picking up on all of the subtle flavors.

The goal for all wine drinkers should be to find the least expensive bottle
_they_ enjoy drinking. I often come across these very nice bottles in the
$7-$10 range that are great. The problem is as the word gets out their price
goes up so I have to start the search over.

~~~
bunderbunder
I saw a very clear illustration of this at a blind whiskey tasting I attended
recently. We tried a selection ranging from the standard cheapo stuff all the
way up to one that as $150/bottle.

It turned out that the cheapest two whiskeys did tend to get rated the lowest
- though interestingly enough most people rated the less popular brand
markedly higher than the more popular one. Beyond that though, everything was
all mixed. I didn't grind any numbers, but at a glance I didn't recognize any
correlation between price and how well people rated it. There weren't even
really any clear favorites; everyone had their own taste. The only really
interesting thing there was that absolutely nobody had picked the $150 whiskey
as their favorite.

~~~
matwood
I remember Mythbusters doing something like this with vodka. An expert came in
and IIRC they were able to rank the various vodkas very effectively.

For me vodka (and tequila for that matter) is similar to wine. The cheap stuff
I can tell is cheap because it really does taste bad. Once you're into any of
the premiums it is all mostly good so it's harder to tell the difference in
price bands. I can almost always pick out Grey Goose though because it has a
subtle sweetness vodkas like Kettle and Belvedere to not have.

~~~
bunderbunder
Vodka's a bit different because what makes it good is being as close to
nothing but alcohol and water as possible. That gives you as objective of a
thing to look for as you're ever going to get in this sort of thing.

With whiskey, on the other hand, the picture's a bit muddier. There's a lot of
different stuff that contributes to the flavor, which means there's a whole
lot of room for stylistic variation and personal preference.

------
JoeAltmaier
And every wine 'expert' who read that will be totally confident that they
can't be fooled so simply. Another part of the equation is the fiction we
construct around ourselves to protect our ego.

Hey! I re-read it. The wine 'experts' tested were "undergraduates". Now I can
legitimately suspect their research. Everybody knows freshmen are idiots.
Especially freshmen flocking to a free wine-tasting.

See how easy that was? I can dismiss statistical significance with semantic
juggling.

~~~
elemeno
They were freshmen studying wine and wine making.

------
noonespecial
I tried mightily when I was young to figure out how to be a wine connoisseur
and appreciate the "finer" wines. All I was ever able to do was start to
recognize the ones I liked.

Sideways be damned, one of my favorites is still the $9 Merlot with the
kangaroo on the side.

What I did find enjoyable is that with quite a small amount of experience, you
can learn to find your way around this little chart(1). You might not be able
to taste the "expensiveness", but you can learn in relatively short order to
identify different kinds of wine.

(1) <http://winefolly.com/review/different-types-of-wine/>

------
ctdonath
_he asked the experts to rate two different bottles of red wine. One was very
expensive, the other was cheap. Again, he tricked them. This time he had put
the cheap wine in both bottles._

Funny, these experiments never involve putting _expensive_ wine in both
bottles.

~~~
degenerate
Using the cheap wine for the experiment means the professor had to drink the
good wine to empty the bottle. The worst part about this "experiment"? White
vs red. You'd have to be fresh off the street to think they taste the same.
This entire article is trash. These undergraduates are as much "wine experts"
as 11 year olds are "education experts" just because they attend school every
day.

~~~
vidarh
> You'd have to be fresh off the street to think they taste the same.

... or have your senses fooled by false expectations. Have someone try it on
you. I mentioned this article at work, and one of the more experienced wine
drinkers in the office immediately went "oh, yes, I had someone fool me with
that".

The thing is, even when we _can_ taste the difference between two things when
our expectations aren't being manipulated, a lot of that ability goes straight
out the window when someone messes with our biases. Messing with peoples
expectations about taste is one of those things childrens TV has been doing
for decades for fun, because it's one of those things that always delights,
and it's trivially easy to do.

In this case, give these same students a closed container and ask them to
distinguish the red from the white wine, and I'd be very surprised if any of
them had any problem.

What is being tested here is _not_ their taste, but how taste can be
overridden by expectations.

~~~
degenerate
Great final point; your explanation and mention of children TV shows casts a
different perspective than the article author was able to do. I can see this
working now, I just don't like the spin/focus on the price and taste of wine.
This is more a study on the brain.

------
TheCondor
Okay, so here is the question... Why don't wine raters, the magazines and
such, insist on blind testing?

They go to the vineyards, eat at selected restaurants, and literally make
'wining and dinning' part of the reviews.

~~~
tatsuke95
Because that would reveal that the whole thing is a racket. They're all in on
it.

------
andrewcooke
one of my favourite wines is cosino macul's _don matias_ \- a reserve cab that
costs about $5000 pesos here (chile). they have a vineyard not far from us,
that we take visitors to, so i feel it's kind of my "local". and it's an old,
established family firm (although what that says in chile isn't necessarily so
great).

anyway, they also have _don luis_ , which is similar (and, confusingly, looks
very similar), but not aged in oak, and so cheaper (say $3500). one day i was
out shopping at the supermarket and saw don luis on offer. so i bought a
bottle and, when i got home, cracked it open. it tasted pretty awesome. so
awesome, in fact, that i decided to go buy some more.

but before i went out the door i took a second look at the bottle - somehow i
had picked up a bottle of don matias (the more expensive reserve). oops. no
surprise it tasted so good.

and that, for me, has always been the argument against the idea that you can't
taste different wines [edit: more correctly, can't taste the difference
between wines and, in this case at least, tell which is more expensive].
_despite_ my expectations, thinking i was drinking a bottle of varietal, i
recognised the better quality (or, at least, different taste) of the reserve.

now i'm no expert, and i _can't_ recognise all wines, or the difference
between many reserves and "super-reserves". but the difference between a plain
and an oaked red (which, legally, is the difference between varietals and
reserves in chile) _is_ clear.

~~~
dfc
How is that an argument against the idea that you can't taste different wines?
It seems to me that in order to make the case you should have recognized that
it was Don Matias without looking at the label. As far as I'm concerned you
drank a bottle of cheaper wine and thought to yourself, "wow. This was tasty,
much tastier than I expected. Instead of wasting money on the fancy label I
should buy this from now on."

~~~
Evbn
But he didn't. He drank the fancier wine.

~~~
dfc
I am not sure what you are referring to when you say "he didnt." I am assuming
you are referring to the latter half of my comment. Yes he drank the fancier
wine. However when drinking it he _thought_ he was drinking the "less fancier"
wine.

------
meaty
Wine experts are in the same class as tarot readers and homeopaths if you ask
me.

------
k2xl
I'm not a wine expert, but I do know that wine experts are indeed out there
and have to go through rigorous blind tests to earn accreditation. At highest
levels you have to blind taste testing to be able to tell what kind of WATER
droplets were mixed with different wines.

~~~
StavrosK
This didn't test wine experts, it tested undergraduates. We can extrapolate,
but it's not as accurate.

~~~
netrus
I guess it is reasonable to assume that a wine making undergraduate has much
knowledge about wine as I, as a regular wine drinker, might collect in my
life. If they cannot tell, I wont get to a point where I would.

~~~
StavrosK
Definitely, but it doesn't mean that _nobody_ can tell, either. I'm not sure
if anyone _can_ tell, but this article gives us no information one way or the
other.

------
talmand
Reading through this article it was easy to see that this was all bunk.

There's no way you can tell me that Pepsi and Coca-Cola pretty much taste the
same.

The difference between the two is immense. I suspect that this person didn't
obtain a sample of properly bottled Coca-Cola from Atlanta GA. Don't go for
that canned stuff in cheap aluminum, if it's not in a glass bottle then you
lose the subtle flavors of the syrup, as the metal changes it over time. Don't
fall for that notion that other bottling plants produce a superior product
because of the differences in local water. Every drinker that enjoys a good
soda knows that the best location of water for Coca-Cola is where it was
created.

Although, New Coke did indeed taste much the same as Pepsi, but that was a
misguided attempt to market to a group of people that don't appreciate a fine
soda. This was quickly stopped and shouldn't be mentioned again.

In fact, the only location that competes are those fine people south of the
border who still insist on using sugar as opposed to corn syrup. I too enjoy a
sugar Coke from time-to-time but nothing beats a bottle from the home plant.

I took the Pepsi Challenge back when it was offered and I don't recall seeing
this M and Q business. The sodas were offered to me in plain, white cups. That
day, I purposely chose Pepsi so that the young person behind the counter would
feel good about their work, since they were employed by Pepsi.

~~~
sigkill
In India you get Coke and Pepsi in bottles. They use cane sugar, and indeed
you can tell the difference between coke, pepsi and thumbs up. Simply put in
order from the most acidic to most sweet it's almost like Thumbs Up, Coke,
Pepsi. I couldn't tell, but I've tried multiple blind tests on my family and
friends and they could. After a few times with them you indeed notice a taste
difference.

~~~
talmand
Yes, Pepsi tends to taste more sweet than Coke. While Coke tends to be a bit
more carbonated feeling in the mouth, if that makes sense.

If you never had it, New Coke was sweeter like Pepsi, from what I remember.

By the way, what's Thumbs Up? Local brand?

~~~
sigkill
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thums_Up>

It was a local brand but was later bought over by Coke. Taste-wise, it's a
less sweeter more fizzier, and a bit more acidic version of Coke.

------
twoodfin
A friend of mine used to run blind themed wine tastings: Each of us would
bring a Barolo, say. They'd go into numbered brown paper bags and we'd taste,
make notes, rate, then reveal and taste some more. Typically these 8-10 wines
would range from $25-$200/bottle, and other than the host we'd have no real
idea of the selection until they'd been revealed. We'd typically intermix some
suitable "matching" small plates so we could try the wines with and without
food.

From a half dozen or so of these, my anecdotal conclusions: A good percentage
of expensive wines are either very difficult to enjoy or flatly bad. On the
other hand, the pre-reveal consensus winners for the night were very rarely
bottles costing less than $40-50, and often were among the most expensive.

My guess is that if you asked two expert sommeliers to pair six wines with two
six course meals, and gave one a budget of $200 for six bottles and another a
budget of $1000, almost anyone with a passion for drinking fine wine could
distinguish the more expensive wines and would enjoy them more.

------
zeteo
I was with him up till this:

>Vodka, for instance, has no flavor

Maybe not if you're doing shots, but on the rocks / straight definitely has
flavors. Personally I dislike some expensive brands, and for the one that I
like best I don't even like the branding.

~~~
talmand
I don't drink vodka but I'm curious.

Does it have flavors from the natural creation process or is it added in at
some point? From the various flavor vodkas I've seen I've always assumed any
flavor is added and not a part of the actual process.

~~~
zeteo
Vodka can be made from grain, potatoes or even grapes and the distillation
process is somewhat different among producers. I'm not saying the resulting
flavor variation is huge, but after a while you start to notice it.

------
bitwize
_The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo_ (2011 film) was an absolute shitfest. The
critics gave it rave reviews. So was the book, and the critics gave _that_
rave reviews.

I'm not sure how critical opinion shapes my evaluation of a film. (My decision
of whether to go see it on the other hand, is so shaped; I generally won't go
to see movies that have been universally shat on in the criticsphere.) Maybe I
would have had less fun seeing _TGWTDT_ had it not been so acclaimed?

------
simonbarker87
If your not heavily into psychology but having a passing interest I can highly
recommend the book "You are not so smart"
[http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/1851689397/ref=as_li_qf_s...](http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/1851689397/ref=as_li_qf_sp_asin_il_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1634&creative=6738&creativeASIN=1851689397&linkCode=as2&tag=efficthing-21)
(aff link)

It is an excellent read and very eye opening

~~~
mitchty
Agreed, the book has one section on how "fight or flight" is a myth. At least
in regards to disasters, everyone needs to read up on that chapter at least.
We are a delusional creature is all I can think of after that book.

~~~
ZeroGravitas
Can you expand slightly? I don't understand what part of "fight or flight"
could be mythical, and Googling doesn't seem to bring up anything relevant.

~~~
mitchty
Fight or flight was probably wrong, and an example of how bad my own memory
is. :)

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normalcy_bias>

So the particular reference I'm alluding to is the Tenerife Disaster. During a
crisis humans do not immediately do sane things to get out of danger.
Basically when the KLM plane collided with the Pan Am plane the top of the
aircraft was ripped off. There was ample time for people to get out and
"abandon ship" if you will. But humans don't immediately react to disasters no
matter how immediate without trying to process it and understand it. Most
people sat in their chairs in a daze not fully realizing that the airplane is
not a safe place any longer.

The people that sprang into action turned out to be the people that preplanned
or at least had already planned "what would I do if things go bad?" and
noticed, we've just gotten the roof torn off our plane, time to get out of
dodge.

What it distills down to, is always have some sort of a plan to spring into
action and know what you will do if you need to get out of the airplane alive.
It seems like a small thing, but just planning, ok if I need to get off this
plane for whatever reason, I am jumping over these people and running out the
door to the left or whatever, turns out to possibly be the difference between
life and death.

If we aren't prepared for it we try to process it as "the new normal" and that
takes time. Exactly when it means life or death snap decisions. It is chapter
7 if you want to read it, but get the book, so much good stuff like why we
have so much brand bias, why we can't trust our memory etc... and his
references are great for further reading.

------
bane
Like many other folks here, I can tell good wine from bad too, in so much as I
can tell wine I like from wine I don't like. Even better, I can usually find
lots of wines I like that are under $12-10.

I even have regions I know have a higher probability of making wines I'll
probably like.

But I've had some pleasant surprises. I don't typically like Virginia wines
for example, but I was recently introduced to Virginia Chambourcin wines, most
of which I've found great. Likewise I don't typically like most White wines,
but the Viogniers from Virginia have typically been to my taste.

More importantly, over the last few years I've gotten to appreciate wines that
I may not like on their own, but pair well with certain foods and round out
the flavor profile, vs. wines I can just sit with and drink.

The truth is the difference between good and bad wine is not some pretentious
expert's objective ranking, but whether you like it or not.

For the record, my three favorite wines at the moment are:

Penfolds Koonunga Hill Shiraz Cabernet - Australia - $10

Cantina Zaccagnini Montepulciano d’Abruzzo - Italy - $12

Santa Rita Cabernet Reserva - Chile - $10

All go well with various foods or just by themselves. And yes I steer towards
full-bodied reds.

But context can be just as important, I've also enjoyed cheap house wine while
eating just as cheap food at local family eateries in Italy. I probably
wouldn't buy that wine, but in that milieu it just "worked".

One rule of thumb I like to use when selecting from wines I don't know is that
generally, a deeper punt (the indentation on the bottom of the bottle) on the
bottle leads to wines I like better -- it's supposed to help with collecting
sediment before pouring. But of course there's always exceptions. Excelsior
(South Africa) makes some stupid cheap ($6-7) but pretty good wines with a
twist off top and a shallow punt.

There are more "fashionable" wines I just don't like. I've yet to meet a
California Pinot Noir I liked for example (the central wine in the movie
Sideways).

Just try lots of wines, get a feel for the flavors, start to catalog which
ones you like and don't like and you'll eventually develop your own taste.
There's no shortage of wines to try, and there's thousands of under $10
bottles you can experiment with.

Just go with that and have fun.

~~~
eob
As a native Virginian, I can tell you we are proud of our Viogniers -- it's
one of the kinds we do best!

~~~
bane
Growing up in NoVA, I never really cared for the local wines, but I was always
trying Cabs and the occasional white. Popular wines to the public, but just
not very good to grow in the wet Virginia climate.

I don't typically like many whites, but I'm really blown away with Viogniers
that grow here. They really are rather spectacular. For my money, I can't
think of another white I've had anywhere with as wonderfully complex a flavor.

If you haven't tried them, Virginia Chambourcins are also really excellent for
the most part and really well suited to the climate.

------
Pinatubo
I can't tell $5 wine from $50 wine, but I can tell the difference between red
and blue M&Ms blindfolded. Trailer park connoisseur.

------
ndonnellan
Freakonomics did an interesting podcast on this, but the conclusion was
essentially same: [http://www.freakonomics.com/2012/02/27/the-days-of-wine-
and-...](http://www.freakonomics.com/2012/02/27/the-days-of-wine-and-mouses-a-
new-freakonomics-radio-podcast/)

*not sure if they referred to the same study or not, but it's possible

------
dysoco
Why Are All The Titles Capitalized Like This ?

~~~
unwind
Because <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Letter_case#Title_case>.

------
seivan
Isn't it a matter of taste? Me and my partner know what types of grapes we
like or don't like, and that tends to remain.

~~~
taeric
I do not think the argument is that you can not tell between grapes. Only
between expensive and not. Also, it should be noted that you probably can tell
between garbage and not. Just once you reach a good state, there is not much
improving it. Evidence shows none, actually.

Similarly, I don't think anyone claims you can not tell the difference between
tap water and bottled. Since, clearly, the local quality of tap water is very
influential to this idea. However, differences between bottled waters is going
to be just as crazy.

------
Surio
It is a book excerpt from 2011 - the actual book is very well written and
documents a lot of cognitive biases.

------
martinced
Regarding the Pepsi / Coke test I'm a bit surprised... Apparently the letter
'M' and 'Q' were inducing people in error because people prefer M over Q.

But... From personal experience I can _tell_ if coke is coming from a 20cl
glass bottle (or a 33cl can) or a 25cl plastic bottle / 1 liter plastic bottle
(tried with friends several times, they're always amazed). I can't
differentiate 20cl glass from 33cl can and I can't differentiate small plastic
from big plastic. But, simply, coke in plastic bottles doesn't have the "coke"
taste. It just doesn't.

There's no way on earth you can make me drink Pepsi and I'll say it's coke. If
often happen in restaurant: I ask if the coke they have is real coke.
Typically people don't like but sometimes they do and serve me Pepsi. Than I
get mean.

: )

~~~
talmand
To be fair, where I'm from when you say you want a Coke you are simply saying
you want a brown soda of some type.

~~~
Stwerp
Mountain Dew is coke as well.

~~~
talmand
Also, where I'm from, Mountain Dew is a mixer for alcohol.

------
martinced
It's nearly impossible to tell good wine from bad wine instantly. A wine may
_seem_ very good but give you a terrible headache the next morning.

Every time I drink some wine and someone tells me it tastes good I answer:
_"let's wait tomorrow".

The only wine which I know ain't giving headaches is champagne (unless you
_really* abuse it).

~~~
andrewvc
I always wonder about the 'good alcohol won't leave you hung over' theory.

I mean, if I'm drinking a Jack and Coke or a Jameson Rocks I'm probably at a
concert or a dive bar, staying up late and having one too many drinks. Whereas
if I'm drinking a high-end single-malt neat I'm probably at an upscale bar and
I'm apt to maybe opt-out of that one last drink.

Additionally, a lot of people have bad memories of low end alcohols from
college, when they're doing shots of cuervo, popov, or other low end alcohols
in excess. Vodka, in particular, has very little differentiation between
brands (it's pure grain alcohol). I'd really love to see a controlled study
where a group of people drink a high-end and a low-end vodka and describe
their hangovers the next day.

~~~
nicw
It depends on the process. A more expensive spirit could use processes that
uses less chemicals, but takes longer to filter.

Some wines are filtered using fining agents that contain gelatin, where some
winemakers choose to use higher-micron (more expensive) filters. Or they use
sanitation 'preservatives' like Velcorin. Any one of these processes could
either trigger an allergy or add something that your body doesn't like
processing.

The closest example is decaf coffee: how to strip out the caffeine. There is a
chemical way (cheap but uses benzene) vs the swiss water process.

<http://www.wisegeek.org/how-is-coffee-decaffeinated.htm>

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decaffeination#Swiss_water_proc...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decaffeination#Swiss_water_process)

------
abraininavat
So many people insisting that they _can_ tell the difference between what they
like and don't like. No one ever questioned this. It follows from the
definition of "like".

