I often hear people who know little about wine (not saying that is true about you!) talk about 'emperor's new clothes' with wine. I'm not saying that people are

I often hear people who know little about wine (not saying that is true about you!) talk about 'emperor's new clothes' with wine. I'm not saying that people aren't affected by say price or status of a type of wine - of course we are. In the same way people probably like belugan caviar or some expensive types of meat more because of its high price. I also think the study that showed wine experts that couldn't tell which vintage of the same wine was better sort of spilled over to "all wine tastes alike". I'm very much an amateur and I can easily tell the difference between sauvignon blanc, riesling, chablis (chardonnay from burgundy) in a blind testing (we often do that). I can sometimes guess country, but that is more hit and miss. My girlfriend that is a more advanced amateur can pick region, country, type of grape, etc on lots of wines. The thing that I think people who aren't interested in wine don't understand is that taste and smell is something that can be trained. When I started hanging out with people that were more interested in wine I couldn't tell the difference either, most wines tasted, well, wine to me. And of course cheap wines for $3-9 are usually not that good or unique, even though there are good wines in that price segment too. Wine tasting also made food a lot better for me, since it trained my sense of taste and smell.