4 ms·

Reminds me of the studies which show that wine connoisseurs are describing the colour, not the taste, of the wine. I've always found this highly suspect because

by taneq 5y ago

Reminds me of the studies which show that wine connoisseurs are describing the colour, not the taste, of the wine. I've always found this highly suspect because I guarantee anyone who drinks wine regularly could fairly accurately judge what price bracket a wine came from, at least within a factor of 2-3. You could mistake a $10 wine for a $15 wine or vice versa but a $50 wine is noticeably different.

jjeaff 5y ago
That is not in line with the blind taste tests I have seen. The vast majority of people not only can't pick out the more expensive wine, they also tend to prefer the cheaper wines.
- pegasus 5y ago
  I think he's talking about wine-lovers - not the vast majority of people by a large margin.
  - taneq 5y ago
    Even wine-likers would be able to tell, but the vast majority of people don't know much about any given niche, by definition. It's like saying "80% of people surveyed couldn't tell the difference between an AE86 and an AE85 just by driving them". Duh but the difference is there and not hard to spot if you know what you're looking for. We need to stop conflating general unfamiliarity with impossibility to distinguish.
  - jjeaff 5y ago
    The blind taste tests I have seen were of self proclaimed wine lovers.
robocat 5y ago
I suggest you organise this with your friends - it is a lot of fun and you can enjoy an adult science experiment. If you do want to try it, then two suggestions: 1. try to have some way to blind yourself from the results, 2. Make a decision whether you want everyone to get plastered or not. I did this a few years ago and it was heaps of fun, but I wasn’t careful about amounts so we all got trolleyed by mistake.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- taneq 5y ago
  I'm always down for this kind of science. We actually did a similar experiment with rum a while ago, I was of the opinion that spirits denatured a little after they'd been open a while and didn't taste as nice, others disagreed and so we did an experiment. Two bottles of rum were bought and stored for several months, one unopened and one opened with a modest amount imbibed from it. Then a brand new one was bought as a control. For each round of testing, while the rest of us were out of the room we had a volunteer pour out and label a sample per bottle per tester and record the labels before randomizing their order. Each tester then tried each of their samples and wrote down which bottle we thought the sample had come from. Afterwards we cross referenced the guesses with the original samples. The end results were inconclusive but indicated that there wasn't much if any difference. My new hypothesis is that the effect I observed was actually due to the coke I was using as a mixer getting stale but much more data is needed.
fullstop 5y ago
I have had some excellent $10 bottles of wine which hold their own against the $50 bottles.

by taneq 5y ago

jjeaff 5y ago

That is not in line with the blind taste tests I have seen. The vast majority of people not only can't pick out the more expensive wine, they also tend to prefer the cheaper wines.

pegasus 5y ago
I think he's talking about wine-lovers - not the vast majority of people by a large margin.
- taneq 5y ago
  Even wine-likers would be able to tell, but the vast majority of people don't know much about any given niche, by definition. It's like saying "80% of people surveyed couldn't tell the difference between an AE86 and an AE85 just by driving them". Duh but the difference is there and not hard to spot if you know what you're looking for. We need to stop conflating general unfamiliarity with impossibility to distinguish.
- jjeaff 5y ago
  The blind taste tests I have seen were of self proclaimed wine lovers.

robocat 5y ago

I suggest you organise this with your friends - it is a lot of fun and you can enjoy an adult science experiment. If you do want to try it, then two suggestions: 1. try to have some way to blind yourself from the results, 2. Make a decision whether you want everyone to get plastered or not. I did this a few years ago and it was heaps of fun, but I wasn’t careful about amounts so we all got trolleyed by mistake.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
taneq 5y ago
I'm always down for this kind of science. We actually did a similar experiment with rum a while ago, I was of the opinion that spirits denatured a little after they'd been open a while and didn't taste as nice, others disagreed and so we did an experiment. Two bottles of rum were bought and stored for several months, one unopened and one opened with a modest amount imbibed from it. Then a brand new one was bought as a control. For each round of testing, while the rest of us were out of the room we had a volunteer pour out and label a sample per bottle per tester and record the labels before randomizing their order. Each tester then tried each of their samples and wrote down which bottle we thought the sample had come from. Afterwards we cross referenced the guesses with the original samples. The end results were inconclusive but indicated that there wasn't much if any difference. My new hypothesis is that the effect I observed was actually due to the coke I was using as a mixer getting stale but much more data is needed.

fullstop 5y ago

I have had some excellent $10 bottles of wine which hold their own against the $50 bottles.