Still another article about the inability of a lot of people to appreciate “good” wine blind. This time in the Sunday New York Post, by Peter Hellman, who writes about wine for the New York Sun, the WSJ and Wine Spectator. He recounted a few recent experiments regarding blind wine identification. 578 Brits were given $5.70 versus $24.50 red Bordeaux to sample blind by a psychologist. 39% correctly identified the more expensive one as the “better” one. Hard to say what they were drinking, but we could guess a generic Bordeaux against a cru bourgeois.
The American Association of Wine Economists tested 6,000 Americans. Bottom line, folks enjoy more expensive wine slightly less. Neuroeconomists at the Califormia Institute of Technology confirmed this finding by measuring medial orbitofrontal cortex (brain’s pleasure center) responses. A related experiment was carried out regarding perception of place. A Cal Cab wine was served with a prix fix meal for 39 diners at an Illinois restaurant. Half were told the wine came from California and half from North Dakota. Food left on plates was weighed. The “California” wine drinkers ate more.
Then Hellman offered a really smarmy example, which makes me wonder about the integrity of his scientific intent. He cited an example of a sommelier boss at a five-star NYC restaurant tricking her staff by letting them taste a "$600 bottle of Chateauneuf-du-Pape." She instead substituted a “humble” $74 bottle of Gigondas. Some seemed perplexed, but none said, “This isn’t right.” First, being staff does not an expert make. Secondly, an employee would be wont to question his boss to her face. And, Thirdly, Gigondas is located very close to Chateauneuf-du-Pape, and I have drunk several bottles of Gigondas in the $30 to $40 price range which were raged outstanding by Robert Parker. A $74 bottle of Gigondas, while possibly a touch more rustic, could be expected to be every bit as good as many very expensive Chateauneuf-du-Papes.
But Hellman established himself as a credible writer by describing a 1914 Champagne made by the non-professional women and children of a winery from which the male winemakers had been called off to war. Bombs burst overhead but the wine was still made. While it was acknowledged that the liquid as tasted recently might not have evoked ooh’s and ah’s in a blind tasting, in the real life tasting there were tears. I guess the point is that in real life you better know what you are drinking or you could sacrifice the real point of wine.
I posted something similar recently after talking to a local sommelier about wine. He said he had read studies which reported that only 10% of people have the genetic wiring to appreciate good food or wine, and nine out of ten “fine” diners fake it, based on what "experts" conclude is good. Most fine diners prefer spaghetti, meatballs and beer when not being observed. I don’t know about any such percentages, but I would love sometime to be served Mouton Rothschild against Mouton Cadet blind and see how I fared. One thing this bunch of recent scientific inquiries has done for me: it has stopped me from wasting much of your or my time on this Wine Forum section of WLDG by sharing or caring what I or anybody else thinks about any particular wine.
