At the Edinburgh Science Festival in April 2011 the University of Hertfordshire invited 578 members of the public to a “Blind Tasting”. What a great idea and I wish I had been there. Each taster was given a range of red and white wines and was asked to judge which were the more expensive. The results were no better than chance. Fifty percent of the participants were unable to distinguish the cheap wines, costing less than £5 a bottle, from more expensive wines costing between £10 and £30 per bottle.
Psychologist Professor Richard Wiseman, from the University of Hertfordshire, who led the research, said: "These are remarkable results. People were unable to tell expensive from inexpensive wines, and so in these times of financial hardship the message is clear – the inexpensive wines we tested tasted the same as their expensive counterparts."
These results do not surprise me one bit. “Cheap” does not necessarily mean poor quality and “Expensive” does not necessarily mean better quality. The general public have also not been trained to identify higher quality wines. By higher quality, I mean wines that taste better, show regional character, complexity and the ability to age. Some wines which are produced to be long lasting may not fully reveal their fruit flavour and complexity until they have aged for a long time. The structure of the wine often masks the fruit flavours which only reveal themselves when the tannins have softened. This is true whether the wine is from a classical region such as Bordeaux or from a New World location such as South Australia. A premier cru Bordeaux wine will take a long time to reveal its qualities and a high quality South Australia wine such as Grange also needs to take a long time in the bottle to show its real class. This is why we pay a premium for such wines. Some expensive wines can also be faulty or of poor quality but I would have thought that the scientists conducting the tests would have weeded out the faulty wines. The general public cannot be expected to know all this but even so they are entitled to higher quality wines when they are paying a much higher price and this is not always the case.
I find “blind tastings” very interesting from the point of view of both suggestibility and to test an expert’s ability to really identify wine and select “quality” wines from inferior ones. We can also use a “blind tasting” to reflect upon what is a high quality wine, what is an inferior one and what is good value for money.
You can try this test yourself. Put the wine in a decanter and serve it "blind". Sometimes, but not often I judge, that a wine should be decanted to prevent sediment getting into the glasses or to allow it to breathe. Usually, I do this with the more expensive wines that I dish up when we have friends around for dinner. Sometimes, I serve one of Professor Wiseman’s cheaper wines in a decanter and ask my guests to gauge the quality of the wine – the decanter suggests quality and quite often my friends are fooled by this ploy. This test can also be tried on people who consider themselves wine experts and you will get interesting results.
When I was doing my wine exams some of my fellow students got themselves into a panic and at one “blind tasting” test one of my colleagues confused Rutherglen Muscat dessert wine with Port; this would simply not have happened to him when he was “blind tasting” in a more relaxed atmosphere. Being put on the spot had made him lose his senses and judgement, albeit temporarily. We should all be careful, then, when making judgements even at a science fair.
We once went to a wine tasting at Denbies vineyard in Dorking Surrey, I volunteered to drive so I spat out the wines. My wife swallowed all hers and I thought that her wine tasting judgement would be impaired. But at one “blind tasting” she was able to pick out the English “Champagne”, ok sparkling wine, against five other real Champagnes. She did this without consideration or hesitation she simply recognised her favourite tipple and having been being born in Champagne it helped. I confused the English Sparkler with one of the lighter champagnes but only after much consideration and hesitation; there is no shame in that. Perhaps, it is better to not think too much when wine tasting and just let your brain free to recognise the correct solution.
I think that Professor Wiseman’s experiment also exposes our expectations about value for money. Should a very expensive wine be expected to be substantially better in taste and quality and should this expectation be linked to price ratios. Thus should a wine costing three times more than a cheaper one be expected to taste three times better?
There is a certain minimum price at which a bottle of wine can be sold,when you consider fixed costs for production, duty, transport and retailing costs etc. This is around £3.50 a bottle. This price is the same for all table wines. Therefore, if you buy a £4 bottle of wine you are getting “50 pence worth of wine”. If you buy a £10 bottle you are getting “£6.50 worth of wine”. Will the £10 bottle taste 6 six better and will it be six times better quality – of course not and you are only fooling yourself if you think it does. You are hitting the law of diminishing returns. I am a wine lover and I am reluctant to pay more than £10 pounds a bottle. Any wine costing this much really should be something special but unfortunately they are often disappointing.
Why do some people pay more? I am a wine enthusiast and sometimes will pay much more than £10 a bottle to compare the qualities of expensive and cheaper wines. Tasting more expensive wines only confirms my opinion that the law of diminishing returns applies to wine quality much more than it does to the quality of other beverages and food. The best beers rarely cost much more than the worst ones. Perhaps beer drinkers are more down to earth and canny than wine drinkers; and perhaps they are not as easily fooled. The same applies to foods, such as cheese, where the price difference between a high quality cheddar and an every day eating one is not that great.
Another reason why there is such a difference in price between high quality wines and more “inferior” ones is the investment potential. Some of this investment potential stems from the fact that wines can improve in the bottle with age. But most of it comes from the brand name and the renown of a wine and of course its rarity value. Some of the wine producers of Bordeaux and Burgundy have conducted the best marketing campaigns ever to get their wines to fetch astronomical prices in the investment markets. They have kept up a relentless market and public relations effort over decades. Marketing and sales expertise is not the exclusive preserve of the Americans and Australians.
Consider this: I attended a lecture some five or six years ago by an economists turned wine maker who specialised in Burgundy wines. He drank the wines he tasted rather than spat them out but of course he was not an alcoholic. At that time he made the point that no wine costs more than about £6 a bottle to make. So what are you paying for if you buy a bottle of the most highly renowned Bordeaux or Burgundy? You are paying for the brand name and you are paying for the cost of buying the cost of the vineyard or how much the brand name owner or vineyard owner would lose if they sold their assets.
Further, consider this: fifteen years or so ago I found a bottle of 1983 Penfolds Grange in a wine merchant for £25. At that time few people had even heard of Grange so I snapped it up. I kept that bottle until 2009. During the intervening period Grange became a famous name and by the late nineties the price a bottle had risen considerably. By the time I opened the bottle it was worth over two hundred pounds a bottle. It is a great wine but was it worth eight times more than when I paid for it? Bottles of Grange from recent vintages are sold at very high prices. Grange has now become an investment wine so the price is being pushed up to a level where the ordinary wine lover cannot afford to buy it and appreciate it. Are investment wines worth that more when it comes to the actual taste and quality of the wine? Ask yourself the question what are you really paying for?
In the marketing of wine the power of suggestion is very strong and a brand name of an expensive wine may suggest a quality and taste which is not appreciably better than lesser known wines.
A similar principle applies to the marketing of other products such as audio equipment and cosmetics. I once had a work colleague who got himself into serious debt by spending tens of thousands of pounds on HIFI equipment. He was an “audiophile” who spent huge amounts of time studying the subject and even designed his living room around the listening experience. He was convinced that a record deck produced a far higher quality of sound than a CD player. My wife and I spent one evening listening to his music and of course the equipment produced a superior sound. But I was not convinced that his £30,000 set up was 30 times better than my set up which cost under £1,000 pounds, in fact it was not even twice as good. He could not convince my wife and I and his wife that the record player was better than the CD. It seemed to me that the record deck gave a perfect rendition of both the music and the snap crackle and pop that goes along with vinyl discs. The static ruined the music for me. He could not convince his wife that he was getting true value for money by buying more expensive equipment. We agreed with his wife that he was falling for marketing hyperbole. The same principle applies to cosmetics the more you pay the better the product must be.
So where does this leave us with the wine? For me it is horses for courses. If you are going to a party or barbecue a cheaper wine may be just as enjoyable as a much more expensive one and if you buy it from a supermarket it will be of perfect quality and it will fit its purpose exactly. At home, I usually drink everyday quality French wine with my meal. I drink this because I visit France so often that I can find bargains there. Some times I try wines from all over the world which I buy from my local wine merchants and supermarket. Usually I pay around six or seven pounds a bottle. For special occasions or once a week with a special meal at home alone with my wife or with friends I like to drink a higher quality wine which has regional character. This wine is usually from France but I like to try wines from all over the world as well. I do not expect to have to pay more than ten pounds to find a really good bottle. On the odd occasion I will splash out and buy a really good bottle of exceptional wine such as Qupe from California or Chateau Larose Perganson from Bordeaux. These wines are expensive but not excessively so and they are superb with good food. You can buy the latter for about 18 pounds a bottle and it tastes just as good as much more expensive wines from the region and it also has the potential to age well. The Qupe is more expensive still but it has rarity value in England; it is full of spicy Syrah flavour.
When buying wine we should also take into consideration the circumstances of its consumption. Is it at a party, is it in a pub or wine bar, or is it at dinner party or grand occasion? Some wines might taste better on their own whilst others taste better with food and this will affect our judgement about the taste and quality of the wine selected. Wine retailers could do more to inform the public about value for money and quality versus price considerations.
The secret of wine tasting is to allow you to find wines which are of superb quality and reflect value for money in their price range; wines which suit their purpose and which live up to their brand name. I urge all wine lovers to find out more about the wines they are buying and where possible to taste before buying.
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