>blindfolded critics struggle to determine between red and white This never happened. The source of this myth is typically a 2001 experiment (G Morrot, F Broc

>blindfolded critics struggle to determine between red and white This never happened. The source of this myth is typically a 2001 experiment (G Morrot, F Brochet, D Dubourdieu), in which they took oenology undergraduate students and had them (not blindly) taste wine and write down tasting notes. A week later they repeated it, but with a white wine and another white wine that they dyed red, given a list of their "red wine notes" and "white wine notes" from the prior trial, and asked to label the two wines using them. They found that the students were more likely to pick from their "red wine notes" to describe the dyed red wine. There are a couple of problems here. First is that a small (50) sample of undergraduate students were used, not "critics", and there was no requirement for them to have any wine drinking experience. I have met very few college kids with developed wine palates, most (even in France where the study was done) I've known drank whatever booze was cheap and available. Second is that the trial was testing visual biases to tasting notes by examining faked visual cues, which is not the same as "determining between red and white" wines blindfolded for example. It's a very specific thing and no one who brings this study up seems to understand that. They were neither neither "blindfolded" nor "critics". In my experience, for common varieties and wine regions, wine professionals can typically place it to the given region of a country and sometimes a given year based off a tasting. I've seen them practice for CSM exams doing this, and you would be pretty surprised at how often they're very close to correct (if not entirely so). Your average non-professional who drinks a lot of wine and pays attention to common notes can also usually place the grape and/or region pretty well, they'll just get thrown off by outliers like Eastern Europe orange wine or Tasmanian pinots or whatever. As far as $5 vs $5000, $5 is a price point that is impossible to meet without extensive use of additives and tricks like adding wine concentrate to a thinned out (read: cut) and deacidified wine, and then correcting its color with an additive like Mega Purple. I've never tasted a good $5 bottle. $20 and up is where you have the chance of getting great bottles, and then it is true that (imo outside of a few types like champagne) the only difference between high and low cost wine is the price tag. Of course, "critics" will tell you that one wine or another is good for all sorts of reasons. Maybe it is good, maybe they are afraid of offending a large producer, maybe their parent company has a stake in the wine being reviewed, maybe (in the case of Robert Parker) they are a lush that likes overly boozy and juicy reds. Either way, don't take wine critics too seriously, it is not an honest industry, and be especially skeptical of Parker-style numerical ratings.