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Miscellaneous See other Miscellaneous Articles Title: Is Wine Bullshit? A Lafite Rothschild Bordeaux sells for a minimum of around $500 a bottle, while humble brands like Charles Shaw and Franzia sell for as little as $2. But as far as “wine economists” are concerned, the level of correlation between the price of a bottle of wine and its quality is low or nonexistent. In a number of damning studies, they suggest that wine is not just poorly priced, but that the different tastes we describe in wine may all be in our heads. A 2008 paper in The Journal of Wine Economics, for example, found that when consumers are unaware of a wine’s price, they “on average enjoy more expensive wines slightly less [than cheap ones].” Experts do not fare much better. The study could not conclude that experts preferred more expensive wine: “In sum, we find a non-negative relationship between price and overall rating for experts. Due to the poor statistical significance of the price coefficient for experts, it remains an open question whether this coefficient is in fact positive.” In another experiment, critics tasted one red wine and one white wine. They described the red in language typical of reds and the white in language typical of whites. The problem? Both were identical white wines; the “red” had been tinted with food coloring. Another study looked at the accuracy of the influential 100 point scale invented by wine critic Robert M. Parker Jr. By having judges at a tasting rate the same wine multiple times, retired statistician and hobbyist winemaker Robert Hodgson found that the judging was completely inconsistent: “The judges’ wine ratings typically varied by ±4 points on a standard ratings scale running from 80 to 100. A wine rated 91 on one tasting would often be rated an 87 or 95 on the next. Some of the judges did much worse, and only about one in 10 regularly rated the same wine within a range of ±2 points.” Year after year, Hodgson replicated his results. When he broadened his scope to results of hundreds of wine competitions, he found that the distribution of medals “mirrors what might be expected should a gold medal be awarded by chance alone.” In March, we reported on these findings as we strove to determine what lies behind the price tag of a bottle of wine. As we have happily spent an extra $10 for a “nice” bottle, and at times felt certain that we suffered when we went with the thrifty purchase, we sought out an explanation for the economists' and psychologists' findings. People in the wine industry responded nearly identically. They admitted certain shortcomings in the wine industry (that large-scale tastings dull critics ability to identify and enjoy wines, that scales ignore the subjective aspect of taste, or that 75% of the price is cache), then maintained that they could generally identify wines they liked and that the great wines were in fact fantastic. But no one offered a rebuttal to studies that found zero correlation. We admitted defeat, and wrote about how a wine’s price is primarily driven by factors of production (even if we were unsure that those factors impacted taste at all), branding, the existence of a large network of middlemen involved in distributing wine, and a healthy dose of snobbery and romanticism. We refrained from drawing final conclusions about whether wine is a hoax. Others have not (see here and here, for example). They found a ready audience for their message of “Wine is bullshit.” But if wine is bullshit, does that mean that good beer, cheese, and steaks are as well? Post Comment Private Reply Ignore Thread
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