How Pleasure Works - Bloom

When I first joined this Forum, years ago, one of my first posts opined that blind tasting is a fool’s game, if one thought he was getting at the essence of the wine that way. Several members argued with me tooth and nail that a person could be “fooled” by a prestigious label into thinking a wine is better than it “truly” was. I argued back that the true essence of a wine is not just the molecules of liquid un-tasted, but the perception of the wine, the experience, as could be measured by a PET Scan, which includes knowledge of what is being drunk. And the experience is not just the simple “sensation” of taste; which, without the learned consideration about that pure sensation, would be much simpler and less pleasurable than the more fully loaded “experience” of a fine wine.

A year or two ago I broached the subject again and encountered much less resistance. This could be because Forum members had come to “learn” that I am too crazy to argue with, or they changed their opinion on the subject – or some dumber members dropped off. Just kidding. Whichever, I was heartened to see that a Yale psychology professor, Paul Bloom, has written a book called, “How Pleasure Works,” 2010, W. W. Norton & Company, which devotes itself to my point.

It was doubly gratifying that Bloom ran a parallel between fine wine appreciation and the pleasure one receives from viewing a Johannes Vermeer painting, a comparison I have also entertained on this Forum more than once, which came to me naturally in keeping with Bloom’s thesis on how the mind perceives pleasure.

I won’t paraphrase or even try to summarize the book in this post other than to quote a passage about wine appreciation per se and to suggest that the book is available. Bloom states that the intensity and essence of pleasure from a painting, or fine wine, or any other object of appreciation can be measured by a fMRI of the brain’s pleasure center. The “real” experience is a fusion of the basic sensation of the object combined with knowledge about the subject. He provides the example of more than 52 wine experts tasting a selected Bordeaux wine:

“In one study, a Bordeaux was either labeled as a ‘grand cru classe’ or as a ‘vin du table.’ Forty experts said the wine with the fancy label was worth drinking, while only 12 (sic) said this of the cheap label. The grand cru was ‘agreeable, woody, complex, balanced and rounded,’ while the vin du table was ‘weak, short, light, flat and faulty.’”

The takeaway point is that if you want to appreciate a fine wine as fully as possible, you had best know what you are drinking. History is a major factor of that knowledge, and a significant reason why Bordeaux is usually the most highly regarded wine by experts. Bordeaux has perhaps the richest history of any appellation, and wine experts are aware of it. (Some experts would say this about Burgundy.)

This point was never so glaring to me than during one evening when a certain couple came to my house for dinner. While they have above average intelligence, they nevertheless had virtually no experience with or knowledge about fine wine. Knowing that Lynn and I appreciate fine wine, they stopped on their way at a wine store run by someone they knew and respected. The proprietor suggested a premier cru Burgundy.

Sadly, my friends’ bottle was badly madeirized. I explained that it can happen to any bottle with too much age, upright storage or a faulty cork, and it was the gesture that mattered. To mollify the disappointment, I brought up from my cellar one of my finest Burgundies so that my friends could experience what their genre of bottle should normally bestow. My choice was sound, in its prime maturity, and spectacular.

Nevertheless, my friends found their bottle to be more pleasurable and elected to drink it instead of mine. Their bottle, as bad as it was, conveyed their limited knowledge gained by their interaction with the wine store, and none of my knowledge about Burgundy.

From that instance, I vowed never again to mismatch a fine wine with a novice, thinking they could somehow grok an epiphany of pleasure from the new experience. Instead, I will now always serve a wine that is sensation intensive, such as a jammy $12 California Merlot, or an Australian red, while opening a fine wine for my wife and me. But lest I deny a long-shot possibility that a novice’s perceptual foundation still might somehow prefer the more complex wine, I will always offer a taste of mine for comparison, and further offer to pour them that wine if they prefer it. So far, a $12 Cal Merlot, or whatever simple wine I have chosen for my guest, has come out on top.

This more advanced model of wine appreciation, which includes history and knowledge of a wine, also explains the famous 1976 Judgment of Paris outcome.

P.S. There are of course chemical components unique to both grand crus and vin du pays, so among the 12 experts that gave the “vin du pays” a good rating, there are probably some who could identify the components characteristic to grand crus and therefore add that bit of knowledge into their pleasure equations, increasing their pleasure.

You may be mixing apples and oranges. I'm just not sure that you can draw any conclusions from the following two very different scenarios:

1. serving wine non blind to experienced wine geeks.
2. serving high quality/expensive wine non blind to those with little/no experience.

Painting with a broad brush but in general terms people taste what they expect to taste. Outliers should be obvious but external influences are too strong for more subtle differences. I undertook a very non-scientific study on this observed behavior one day while I worked the tasting room at a winery in the mid-west. It was our (very annoying) practice to tell the customers what they will taste in the wine before we pour it. Having witnessed this for months, I started to wonder what would happen if I told them a completely different but believable tasting profile. As expected everyone one that passed through the door claimed to taste what I told them to taste. No idea if they were just humoring the kid behind the bar or not but based on my own experience I expect not.

My experience at the same winery is that the wine maker sent me home with two bottles and asked me to report back on what I thought. At that time the winery made Cab, Merlot, PN, Zin, Chard, SB, Chenin, and a Muscat. Both wines were red, rather light bodied and one had a distinct cherry note. Using my experience to fill in the blanks, I assumed that these were new Pinot bottlings. Turns out one was Chard that had run through the filter right after the Cab and picked up the color and the other was a cherry wine. In hindsight it was obvious that those wines were not PN but based upon my expectations, nothing else made sense so they had to be PN.

I find this an interesting subject and shall attempt to get hold of the book.

Personally I am a bit ambivalent about the extent as to which the liquid itself is important versus knowing the background of the wine. I would like to fall into the camp that thinks the context is key, but the trouble with that approach is that the context can be cynically manipulated. For example prices can be inflated with the intent not only of making money in the short term, but to "give more pleasure" and raise the profile of the wine without actually putting more effort into the liquid at all. Or producers with a good reputation can get lazy.

The case of the the madeirised Burgundy is interesting, Covert. I am not totally convinced that they liked it because they were told it was good by the wine store, and you thought it was bad because it tasted nasty. It could be that they just happened to like the taste irrespective of what Burgundy should be like, and you did not like the taste mainly because you knew that it was wrong. In other words the precise opposite of what you suggest. Please, don't take this the wrong way - I don't know you and your tastes, but am just saying that the story as written can be interpreted another way. In the end it seemed to work out well - everyone drank what they liked and that is the main thing.

But your general point that novices generally prefer cheaper wines is absolutely correct, and has been demonstrated by blind tasting in The Wine Trials: http://www.winenous.co.uk/wp/archives/691.

Fortunately I have never yet encountered an expensive wine that is badly oxidised, but on one occasion I got a cheap one in a restaurant and decided to drink it anyway because actually the the sherry-like aspect was quite interesting and attractive. And on another occasion I returned to buy more of an oxidised batch from a shop, but that was very heavily discounted, and actually quite good - I even wondered if it was might to be an oxidised style, but later research suggested not. If it were an expensive Burgundy I suspect I would have a different attitude.

I find this an interesting subject and shall attempt to get hold of the book.

Personally I am a bit ambivalent about the extent as to which the liquid itself is important versus knowing the background of the wine. I would like to fall into the camp that thinks the context is key, but the trouble with that approach is that the context can be cynically manipulated. For example prices can be inflated with the intent not only of making money in the short term, but to "give more pleasure" and raise the profile of the wine without actually putting more effort into the liquid at all. Or producers with a good reputation can get lazy.

The case of the the madeirised Burgundy is interesting, Covert. I am not totally convinced that they liked it because they were told it was good by the wine store, and you thought it was bad because it tasted nasty. It could be that they just happened to like the taste irrespective of what Burgundy should be like, and you did not like the taste mainly because you knew that it was wrong. In other words the precise opposite of what you suggest. Please, don't take this the wrong way - I don't know you and your tastes, but am just saying that the story as written can be interpreted another way. In the end it seemed to work out well - everyone drank what they liked and that is the main thing.

But your general point that novices generally prefer cheaper wines is absolutely correct, and has been demonstrated by blind tasting in The Wine Trials: http://www.winenous.co.uk/wp/archives/691.

Fortunately I have never yet encountered an expensive wine that is badly oxidised, but on one occasion I got a cheap one in a restaurant and decided to drink it anyway because actually the the sherry-like aspect was quite interesting and attractive. And on another occasion I returned to buy more of an oxidised batch from a shop, but that was very heavily discounted, and actually quite good - I even wondered if it was might to be an oxidised style, but later research suggested not. If it were an expensive Burgundy I suspect I would have a different attitude.

Steve, I agree that my friends could have liked the oxidized Burgundy irrespective of any story or knowledge. I used the example for convenience, knowing it could be off base a little. To your other point, I confess to having liked the taste of corked Bordeaux before I learned it was "wrong" to drink it. It fondly reminded me of an old library. And to your point that the reverse of some of the stuff I said could be true, I again agree. Truth is often not linear and the only thing I am sure of is/are taxes. Even death might be postponed indefinitely, given some of the recent research results.

You may be mixing apples and oranges. I'm just not sure that you can draw any conclusions from the following two very different scenarios:

1. serving wine non blind to experienced wine geeks.
2. serving high quality/expensive wine non blind to those with little/no experience.

Agree. Being a fan of discordant cacophony, I do mix apples and oranges (Henry James said relations stop nowhere and Emerson convinced me of the folly in striving for too much consistency), and I expect any conclusions in life to be temporary at best.

Painting with a broad brush but in general terms people taste what they expect to taste. Outliers should be obvious but external influences are too strong for more subtle differences. I undertook a very non-scientific study on this observed behavior one day while I worked the tasting room at a winery in the mid-west. It was our (very annoying) practice to tell the customers what they will taste in the wine before we pour it. Having witnessed this for months, I started to wonder what would happen if I told them a completely different but believable tasting profile. As expected everyone one that passed through the door claimed to taste what I told them to taste. No idea if they were just humoring the kid behind the bar or not but based on my own experience I expect not.

My experience at the same winery is that the wine maker sent me home with two bottles and asked me to report back on what I thought. At that time the winery made Cab, Merlot, PN, Zin, Chard, SB, Chenin, and a Muscat. Both wines were red, rather light bodied and one had a distinct cherry note. Using my experience to fill in the blanks, I assumed that these were new Pinot bottlings. Turns out one was Chard that had run through the filter right after the Cab and picked up the color and the other was a cherry wine. In hindsight it was obvious that those wines were not PN but based upon my expectations, nothing else made sense so they had to be PN.

Interesting stuff. I was recently embarrassed to guess a Gevrey Chambertin I was drinking blind was a Zinfandel.

......“In one study, a Bordeaux was either labeled as a ‘grand cru classe’ or as a ‘vin du table.’ Forty experts said the wine with the fancy label was worth drinking, while only 12 (sic) said this of the cheap label. The grand cru was ‘agreeable, woody, complex, balanced and rounded,’ while the vin du table was ‘weak, short, light, flat and faulty.’”

The takeaway point is that if you want to appreciate a fine wine as fully as possible, you had best know what you are drinking. History is a major factor of that knowledge, and a significant reason why Bordeaux is usually the most highly regarded wine by experts. Bordeaux has perhaps the richest history of any appellation, and wine experts are aware of it. (Some experts would say this about Burgundy.)...

Odd that you should see it that way - I draw just the opposite conclusion: one should taste (enjoy?) the wine, not the hype.

And about your Burgundy couple: while they may be intellegent people, they are probably not immune to stubborness and hubris.

Odd that you should see it that way.

Not really. If you are interested, check into how the brain works regarding perception. Some people do not make a distinction between sensation and perception and then think in terms of hype rather than the scientific principle I am talking about. Hype can be a factor in perception, but what I am relating work's independently of hype.