Empirical studies with only 54 participants are practically meaningless, just like anecdotal qualitative research. You cannot draw conclusions about tens of tho

Empirical studies with only 54 participants are practically meaningless, just like anecdotal qualitative research. You cannot draw conclusions about tens of thousands of wine experts or millions of wine consumers from such a small group. That being said, there is also something annoying about this study, because it so much misses what the experience of wine tasting is about - all senses work together, and of course you can fool them by providing falsified input (e.g. wrong color). There are many ways to fool the senses, ranging from artificial flavors to stage magicians' tricks. But it's much nicer to be surprised by a wine when you're not being fooled or tricked by someone, and with some experience it's possible to describe and agree with others on some of the objective features of wines - whether you then like the wine or not is purely subjective. What I like about wine is that you never really know for sure what you get, if you vary the vineyards, grapes and years each time.