Timeline for Are different prices in wines justified by taste?
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
27 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Apr 19, 2011 at 10:41 | comment | added | Sklivvz | Please take this discussion in chat before it degenrates further. | |
| Apr 18, 2011 at 22:35 | vote | accept | Sklivvz | ||
| Apr 18, 2011 at 0:21 | comment | added | Marcin | @Tak: Be specific. I don't see anything that contradicts what I say. | |
| Apr 18, 2011 at 0:12 | comment | added | tak | @Marcin: see the above answer as well as this one and this one. | |
| Apr 18, 2011 at 0:00 | comment | added | Marcin | @tak: In what sense is anything that I say the opposite of what research shows? | |
| Apr 17, 2011 at 23:45 | comment | added | tak | @Marcin: These are interesting observations, but as far as I can tell they're completely the opposite of what the research actually shows. Can you back up your claims with references? If not please see this for more information. | |
| Apr 17, 2011 at 9:16 | comment | added | Marcin | @Tak: It would also be nice to have some indication as to how the sample environment/setup affected the ability of subjects to perceive the flavour of the wine properly. The nose had already been lost. I'm unfamiliar with the effect of lying down on taste, or how the environment of the MRI scanner would affect subjects. If it does affect taste perception, it is possible that the suggestive effect of price would be greatly enhanced. | |
| Apr 17, 2011 at 9:11 | comment | added | Marcin | @Tak: I'm not going to provide peer-reviewed papers on basic oenological facts. It is well known that different wines, particularly red wines, attain their optimum flavour after different breathing periods, and at slightly different temperatures. It appears that the researchers here have neglected this aspect. | |
| Apr 17, 2011 at 9:08 | comment | added | Marcin | @Tak: The paper does provide tabulated data for "pleasantness" ratings, which is disappointing, but I stand corrected on that point. However, the other flaw in the method is that delivery through a straw denies subjects the ability to inhale the aroma ("nose") of the wine, which is a critical part of the experience. | |
| Apr 17, 2011 at 0:55 | comment | added | tak | @Marcin: Also, the hypothesis that blood-oxygen-level-dependent activity in the medial orbitofrontal cortex correlates with pleasure is very well supported. See references 6 and 10–16. | |
| Apr 17, 2011 at 0:54 | comment | added | tak | @Marcin, Sounds interesting, can you back those claims up with a peer-reviewed paper? It seems counterintuitive to me that mishandling the wines would cause the expensive wine to universally taste worse than the cheap wine, especially since it involves both subjective and objective measures. The paper does mention that in addition to the objective fMRI results, the subjects also reported a subjective correlation of price with perceived flavor of the wines (see figure 1). | |
| Apr 17, 2011 at 0:39 | comment | added | Marcin | @tak: Measuring brain function, without taking ratings from test subjects leaves us at the mercy of the hypothesis that the brain activity studied correlates with pleasure. | |
| Apr 17, 2011 at 0:38 | comment | added | Marcin | @tak: Secondly, as I said, environment affects experience. Subjects in an MRI machine are not in the ideal environment to enjoy anything. The less complex flavours of cheaper wine are again designed to appeal to a wide range of palettes, in a wide range of circumstances. This would tend to reduce the benefit of well-handled fine wine over cheaper wine. | |
| Apr 17, 2011 at 0:30 | comment | added | Marcin | @tak: I've already told you: This paper does not describe their handling of the wine. More expensive wines frequently require greater breathing times, and will suffer in an objective test, if not handled correctly, because they are not being served as intended. Cheaper wines are generally designed for more immediate drinking, and to tolerate much greater variation in handling. | |
| Apr 17, 2011 at 0:26 | comment | added | Marcin | @tak: A smell test is an assessment for markers that indicate that something may be wrong. It does not involve any kind of replication or reprocessing of data. It's good, but it is no guarantee of anything but an ability to write papers in normal style. | |
| Apr 16, 2011 at 18:40 | comment | added | tak | @Marcin: I'm not sure what you mean by "a smell test", peer review is crucial for science, and the paper is very well cited (123 so far). Are we talking about the same paper?. What is it specifically about the paper with which you find fault? Can you give a feasible hypothesis as to why the results show the subjects reacting positively to cheap wines they were told were expensive, and negatively to expensive wines they were told were cheap? How would the factors you mentioned cause this counterintuitive result? | |
| Apr 16, 2011 at 17:27 | history | edited | Borror0 | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
added capital letters
|
| Apr 16, 2011 at 12:00 | comment | added | No longer here | Such a study would be even more interesting, if followed by the same wines with their true price and then the same wines with some random price. :=) With Wine, Caviar, Oysters, cheese, Ferrari cars, status is everything. I come from a wine growing area and will never pay more than about 4 Euro per bottle. | |
| Apr 16, 2011 at 10:10 | comment | added | Marcin | @tak: You realise that peer-review pretty much amounts to a few other academics checking that the paper passes a smell test? They won't attempt to replicate results, or even process the raw data. But, specifically, the report linked to does not tell us enough about the method, especially the handling of the wines, whether all subjects were given all wines, and in what environment the tastings took place. All are crucial. | |
| Apr 16, 2011 at 4:17 | comment | added | tak | @Marcin I think the paper mentioned here is clear enough. Just saying "I'm skeptical" doesn't mean much when it's said about peer-reviewed research with no specific criticisms of the research. The methods described in the paper are extremely rigorous. What is it specifically about the paper that you're skeptical about? | |
| Apr 15, 2011 at 20:09 | comment | added | mfg | @Lager Moreover, if you expect an expensive wine, you are going to be more thorough in tasting it exerting effort even to enjoy it; whereas with cheap wine one might not be so wholly inclined | |
| Apr 14, 2011 at 21:48 | comment | added | Lagerbaer | An additional thought: Most tastes can be described with either a positive or a negative adjective. If you expect a good wine, you might be more inclined to use the positive ones to describe exactly the same taste you'd assign a negative adjective with in a cheap wine. | |
| Apr 14, 2011 at 13:22 | comment | added | fred | I used to be in a wine club. We'd blindly serve 6 different wines on a theme - chianti's, dessert wines, etc. Almost without exception, price had no correlation on the group favorite. Far from scientific, but it does lend some support to the study. | |
| Apr 14, 2011 at 12:46 | comment | added | Lennart Regebro | I would like to see a test like this done in France. Not that I think French are better at tasting wine, but because I think price follows quality much more in France than it does in Sweden, Poland and the US (which are the only countries I have experience from in this issue). | |
| Apr 14, 2011 at 12:31 | comment | added | Marcin | I'm pretty skeptical of these studies, and I'm a cheapskate. Cheap wines are optimised for service by the glass, on their own, poured from a freshly opened bottle, in a wide range of temperatures. By contrast, expensive wines, especially reds, require time to breath, and should be served at a particular temperature to bring out their flavour. | |
| Apr 14, 2011 at 12:23 | comment | added | Rory Alsop | Awesome collection of studies. Nice one! | |
| Apr 14, 2011 at 10:03 | history | answered | Oliver_C | CC BY-SA 3.0 |