More expensive wine tastes "better," but only if people know the price

[TheAttorney]

I think wine tasting is a generally a good analogy to listening tests. 
And in both cases, people selectively choose the evidence to suit their beliefs.
 
Of course bias will come into the equation in sighted tests. I don't think anyone at all would dispute that.
But blind testing has its own flaws, which supporters "blindly" ignore.
 
Like the test I read about when blind tasters couldn't tell the difference between cognac and whiskey.
 
Like the time when professional wine tasters (for a wine magazine) were secretly given the same bottle of wine at two different tastings. In the first event, the bottle came near top. In the second event, it came well down the rankings and with completely different tasting notes.
That doesn't mean that blind testing has no value, but you need to accept the pitfalls for it to be useful.
 
If you compare a randomly expensive wine with a randomly cheap one, you'll get a random result - just like hifi.
But a carefully chosen expensive wine will ALWAYS beat a carefully chosen cheap wine - just like hifi.
The cheap wine may well be better value, but never a better absolute taste.
Of course, personal preference also comes into it - just like hifi. If you hate dry wines, then you may well prefer a cheap sweet wine to an expensive dry one.
 
Blind tests can easily spot certain taste differences, such as level of tanin. Just like listening tests can easily spot frequency differences in headphones.
But when comparing two wines which have the same tannin level, dryness, grape variety etc, blind tests are an unreliable way of choosing which is best, just like for neutral hifi components like DACs and cables. 
 

 

[Prog Rock Man]

That some tasters could not tell the difference between cognac and whisky is not damning for blind testing. It is damning for the tasters and the drinks involved.
 
Criticising blind testing when it brings up a surprise result is like shooting the messenger. Fact is that the whisky and cognac involved must have tasted very similar. (Assuming there was no error in the test, such as mixing up the results)
 
So "But a carefully chosen expensive wine will ALWAYS beat a carefully chosen cheap wine - just like hifi." But, in the original article 6000 blind tests were used. Are you claiming that none had a carefully chosen wine?

 

[bhd812]

i see this everyday at my bar, someone orders a Kettle and 7 or a Goose and cran. when are mixing a Vodka with anything else you won't taste or feel any difference from a bottle of Absolut...Fact is people think more costly is always better.

 

[haloxt]

Better in alcohol is more subjective than, say, better in broccoli. Also, there is a similar alteration in brain chemistry whenever one expects to experience something believed to be likely good. Through self-understanding, and self-control (or deception), one can try to replicate the belief that what is about to occur is good before experiencing it. Everyone has different degrees of gullibility, and evolutionarily there is not much wrong about gullibility, just not a good trait for critical sensory testing.

 

[terriblepaulz]

Quote:

i see this everyday at my bar, someone orders a Kettle and 7 or a Goose and cran. when are mixing a Vodka with anything else you won't taste or feel any difference from a bottle of Absolut...Fact is people think more costly is always better.

Vodka is supposed to be a neutral spirit, so taste differences, if any, should come from additives.  Every bar owner should put Popov in their bottles of Ketel or Grey Goose or whatever - http://consumerist.com/2008/05/vodka-is-pretty-much-the-same-no-matter-what-brand-you-buy.html
 
P.S.  Billy - I love your Chi-flavored avatar.  Go Bears. 

 

[Prog Rock Man]

Quote:

Better in alcohol is more subjective than, say, better in broccoli. Also, there is a similar alteration in brain chemistry whenever one expects to experience something believed to be likely good. Through self-understanding, and self-control (or deception), one can try to replicate the belief that what is about to occur is good before experiencing it. Everyone has different degrees of gullibility, and evolutionarily there is not much wrong about gullibility, just not a good trait for critical sensory testing.

Ben Goldacre's studies in 'Bad Science' show just how powerful suggestion is. Tell someone something is likely to make them better, whether it is a placebo or not and you greatly increase the chances of them getting better.
 
Pricing is one way of telling someone that something is better than something else, whether that is alcohol, hifi or the cosmetics industry is another good example.

 

[TheAttorney]

 
Quote:

That some tasters could not tell the difference between cognac and whisky is not damning for blind testing. It is damning for the tasters and the drinks involved.
 
The Attorney: The open minded observer would say that the issue could have been with the tasters or drinks OR with blind tests.
 
 
Criticising blind testing when it brings up a surprise result is like shooting the messenger. Fact is that the whisky and cognac involved must have tasted very similar. (Assuming there was no error in the test, such as mixing up the results)
 
The Attorney: To assume that whiskey and cognac must have tasted similar is a very unscientific conclusion to the result. The two drinks have SOME similarities, which may be enough to CONFUSE peoples taste buds in a blind test, but a connoisseur of one or other drink would never ever say they are the same thing.
 
 
So "But a carefully chosen expensive wine will ALWAYS beat a carefully chosen cheap wine - just like hifi." But, in the original article 6000 blind tests were used. Are you claiming that none had a carefully chosen wine?
 
The Attorney: I'm sure most blind testings are run properly and fairly. The wine is what it is. The variable here is the human mind and how it reacts to different circumstances. What I'm saying is that blind tasting is a poor way of deciding which wine to buy. The most experienced experts will get it right some of the time, but most of us will get confused in a spectacularly random manner. A better way is to just enjoy the wine in whatever manner you normally drink wines - e.g. with food.
A reminder that I agree that price will cause bias for most people, so sighted tests aren't great either.That's life - you just have to use your experience and judgment to to make the best choice you can. Just like hifi.

 

 

 

[Prog Rock Man]

I did say in my post #17, that there could have been an error made with the blind test, I was not being totally closed minded to that.
 
I do not see why coming to the conclusion that the whisky and cognac tasted similar enough to be mistaken for each other is unscientific. It is a reasonable conclusion, just as the other conclusions such as a fault with the way the blind test was run, or a problem with the tasters are also reasonable conclusions.
 
I do think that it wrong to conclude that the test shows there is an issue with blind tests in general.

 

[TheAttorney]

The main point I'm trying to make is that I KNOW there is a difference between whiskey and cognac.
I also KNOW there are different quality levels of wine and that carefully chosen more expensive wines are better than cheap ones.
Based on years of experience (including blind testing) and knowing that there are real scientific explanations - like year of vintage and quality of soil at the vineyard.
 
So when a blind test concludes there are no differences, then this merely reinforces my view that blind tests are a poor way of reliably showing those differences. For wine and for neutral hifi components. The test isn't at fault -it's the human mind, just as the human mind gets fooled by a higher price.

 

[Prog Rock Man]

I was surprised and perturbed to read that someone failed to reliably tell between whisky and cognac.
 
Our difference is that when a blind test produces an unexpected result, I do not then claim blind testing to be unreliable. I think that either something went wrong with that specific test, or the taster got it horribly wrong or the whisky and cognac in question actually taste similar.
 
You spell it whiskey, so I assume you mean Irish or American, not Scottish. In which case, since I do not drink the stuff, nor cognac I may fail a blind test between them. Now, if it was whisky, as in Scotch, I would be horrified to fail a blind test with cognac, but if I did, I would not blame the blind test. That would be like a workman blaming his tools for a mistake he made.

 

[TheAttorney]

Okay, my final word.
 
Firstly, I did mean scotch, I just spelt it wrong

. Too much time on a US-based forum maybe?
 
Secondly, I'm not blaming blind tests, I'm blaming the human mind for not being suitable for certain types of blind test.

 

[Prog Rock Man]

  My favourites are Macallan and Jura. I can't stand whiskey and I cannot remember the last time I had cognac.

 

[TheAttorney]

My really last post: I like a good malt myself, but I'm not an expert.
 
But as a scot, you'll be horrified by this blind test where 8 out of 8 people couldn't tell the difference between malt and blended!
 
http://www.artofdrink.com/archive/research/distinguishing-between-malt-and-blended-whisky
 
 

 

[haloxt]

Quote:

So when a blind test concludes there are no differences, then this merely reinforces my view that blind tests are a poor way of reliably showing those differences. For wine and for neutral hifi components. The test isn't at fault -it's the human mind, just as the human mind gets fooled by a higher price.

People sometimes say that some testing methodologies are preferable to DBT, but the steps taken in those other tests can be adapted to work within the framework of DBT. All DBT does is try to minimize false positives.

 

[nikongod]

 
Quote:

So when a blind test concludes there are no differences, then this merely reinforces my view that blind tests are a poor way of reliably showing those differences. For wine and for neutral hifi components. The test isn't at fault -it's the human mind, just as the human mind gets fooled by a higher price.

The point of the linked tests was not to tell if there were differences, but whether people could identify which wine was more expensive purely by taste.
 
The tests here did not say that there are no differences, far from it. They simply said that people can not tell which wine is more expensive without previously tasting it.
 
Can you identify a more reliable method of showing differences?
 
Its a shame that various forms of blind testing have stopped being an effort to answer a question of what people actually prefer, but simply a test to determine what sounds the same because of preconceived notions of only testing "neutral hi-fi components" - which I interpret to mean stuff that measures well. Go out on a limb, and blind test between what someone told you measures perfectly, and something that dosnt measure well but a lot of people say sounds good... When you have things that are not exceptionally similar passing a blind test is actually very easy if you have functional hearing. Whats hard is swallowing the result that you prefer the piece of gear that measures worse. 
 
Quote:

People sometimes say that some testing methodologies are preferable to DBT, but the steps taken in those other tests can be adapted to work within the framework of DBT. All DBT does is try to minimize false positives.

Im curious which/why.