Wednesday, April 7, 2010

A little whine about wine

We are home winemakers. Well, David is, anyhow, and I enjoy the results. (Although I did make a killer Riesling almost all by myself.) So we know a little about wine. And we are always looking to drink learn more.

One thing that we discuss a lot is: If it costs more, is it a better wine? I've read more and more reviews lately that indicate for the most part, you really don't need to pay more than, say, $20 for a high quality wine. And there are many, many more economical wines out there. Got $10? Go buy a good wine and enjoy it!

We proved this recently at the home of an acquaintance that is, for want of a better term, a wine snob. I say this because when you drink wine with this person, he's very careful to let you know that what you are drinking is very expensive. He isn't really interested in discussing the nose or flavor notes or any other characteristics of any particular wine, but he really wants to talk price. After tasting several very expensive bottles at his home, we pretty much proved, at least to ourselves, that a $100 bottle of wine is really not 5 times better than a $20 bottle. (Okay, maybe there are some out there that are, but I have yet to have one.)

And now we have scientific proof to back up our theory!
Here it is. Basically, researchers at the California Institute of Technology, with the help of the Stanford wine tasting group, proved that price influences the perceived quality of taste.

I knew it!

So go out and buy that cheap wine, and just slap a $90 price tag on it. You'll enjoy it even more. Isn't science great?

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