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I always like Emile Peynaud’s quote about how expensive wines tasted blind frequently disappoint. Along similar lines, there’s the well known scientific experiment where subjects had their brains scanned while they were tasting the same wine, but being given different price information each time. They liked the wine more \u2013 and their brains responded differently \u2013 when they believed it to be expensive.<\/p>\n
Judging wine blind is difficult. But judging wines sighted has its own problems. In particular, it’s really difficult to judge super-expensive wines sighted. The knowledge we have about their price gets in the way, and even changes out perception. We give the wine the benefit of the doubt, and can even see complexity, harmony and balance where there is none. <\/p>\n
This is something that producers can take advantage of. They like to show their expensive wines at grand lunches in top restaurants, or at tutored one-on-ones with the winemaker. If I want to taste the top Champagnes, then I’ll likely have to do it at one of these occasions, and it certainly can skew things in favour of the wine. Penfolds are very clever in this regard: I think most of the times I have tasted current and older vintages of Grange have been in the presence of the talented, energetic Peter Gago, who acts as a winemaking ambassador for Penfolds’ Bin Series wines. They are also quite selective at showing off their new releases to on-message journalists in settings that they control. Like the top Champagne houses, Penfolds’ wines are now targeted clearly at the luxury goods marketplace. The first growth Bordeaux Chateaux won’t allow their wines to be tasted blind alongside all the others during the primeurs week: you have to go to them, if you are lucky enough to score an invite. No exceptions are made, even for publications whose normal behaviour is to taste blind.<\/p>\n
Tasting old wines can also have a similar effect. It’s so hard to assess, objectively, great old vintages of top wines. In part, this has made things easier for fakers. Several high profile wine journalists \u2013 who regularly get invited to high ticket events where grand old wines are served \u2013 have fallen for fake wines. How is this possible? It is actually much easier to get it wrong when you assess super expensive bottles because you are psychologically primed to like the wine a great deal. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I always like Emile Peynaud’s quote about how expensive wines tasted blind frequently disappoint. Along similar lines, there’s the well known scientific experiment where subjects had their brains scanned while…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9945","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9945","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9945"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9945\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9947,"href":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9945\/revisions\/9947"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9945"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9945"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9945"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}