Wine Enthusiast Magazine
SubscribeA study at the California Institute of Technology came up with scientific backing for the widely observed phenomenon that people tend to like expensive wines more than less expensive wines.
The interesting part, to me, is not just that knowing you are drinking a high-priced wine makes you say that you like it better, but that something happens in the brain so that you really believe it’s better. You’re not simply being consciously snobbish.
I couldn’t find a date on the PDF of the study summary, so maybe this is old news, but for some reason it caught on in the UK over the weekend, and both the Times Online and the Daily Mail ran stories on it , quoting one of the authors of the study, Antonio Rangel.
He and his associates had subjects taste wines while lying down and getting their brains scanned at the same time. (They took elaborate precautions to make everything fair and to make sure the subjects didn’t spill the wine all over themselves and the expensive neural monitoring equipment.)
Subjects were told they were there to see how the timing of tasting affects tasting results. They tasted a few different wines, and each time there were two wines that were actually the same, but the subjects were told one sample was cheap, $5 or $10, and the other was expensive, $45 or $90.
The results showed that people liked the wines they knew to be more expensive more. This was not surprising. Merchants and sommeliers know that some people have to get “the best” — meaning the most expensive — before they can say they enjoy it. And look at how the classified growth chateaus in Bordeaux jockey for price position.
What was new to me was that the subjects’ brain activity showed that they basically couldn’t help believing the more expensive wines were better. As the Daily Mail said, “The researchers observed changes in a part of the brain known as the medial orbitofrontal cortex, which plays a central role in many types of pleasure. The cortex became much more activated by the ‘expensive wines’ than by their cheaper counterparts.”
The Mail quotes Rangel as stating that this showed the increase in pleasure was real, even though the products were identical. The human brain computes pleasure in a sophisticated manner by integrating actual sensory properties with expectations about how good it is, the Mail reported.
A few weeks later when the test was repeated without the subjects knowing the prices, there were no statistical differences in the results.
I draw a couple of lessons from this, the first one disappointing and the second one rather heartening:
1. Unfortunately, vintners, merchants and restaurant wine directors now have some scientific cover for pushing the price envelope as far as they can.
2. Blind tasting by merchants, critics and consumers to decide which wines to buy is more important than ever. The critics and professional wine buyers who don’t taste blind, and say it’s OK because they are not swayed by a wine’s reputation or price tag, may have just been robbed of their excuse.
I’ve always believed that tasting blind is the best way to form opinions and make wine recommendations that are the most objective possible. On the other hand, non-blind tasting and normal non-blind drinking are the best ways to appreciate wines and their stories.
What else does this study suggest?
Filed under: Critics/Competitions, Industry Issues
9 Comments
January 14th, 2008 at 10:32:34 PM
This story reminds me of that Cornell study completed last year (http://www.physorg.com/news105623535.html). They set up an environment for diners to taste two different wines with their pre-fixed meal. Half the bottles claimed to be from Noah’s Winery in California. The labels on the other half claimed to be from Noah’s Winery in North Dakota. In both cases, the wine was an inexpensive Charles Shaw wine.
Those drinking what they thought was California wine, rated the wine and food as tasting better, and ate 11% more of their food. Pretty funny stuff.
January 15th, 2008 at 12:15:52 AM
I knew it sounded familiar. Maybe that was it. On a related tangent, someone suggested today that the process of then wanting to pay for the supposedly great wine is another step. Just because one thinks the expensive wine is better, doesn’t necessarily mean one will pay the higher price. And…. in the laboratory setting, the subjects also had the thrill of knowing they were getting an expensive wine for FREE. That might be what really made their brain chemistry simmer.
January 15th, 2008 at 12:42:40 AM
“…the process of then wanting to pay for the supposedly great wine is another step”. So true! You will get a kick out of this story (“Wine Miracles” by yours truly, Enobytes – http://blog.oregonlive.com/wine/2008/01/in_search_of_wine_miracles.html). Consumers seem to think that producers can mirror the best quality wine at any level, e.g. give me a Rombauer Chardonnay at the cost of a Charles Shaw :)
“…knowing they were getting an expensive wine for FREE. That might be what made their brain chemistry simmer.” Exactly – pretty funny!
January 15th, 2008 at 2:59:56 AM
I see it all the time after doing 100′s of wine tours. I feel guilty when people want and buy expensive wines and say they will never drink inferior wine again it is the beginning of an expensive habit!!! But good is really good and then you know why and can never go back…
January 15th, 2008 at 7:02:12 PM
Jim,
I wonder, did the study say what level of knowledge of expertise the subjects had? It seems to me it would be important to know if they were skilled wine palates as opposed to just “ordinary” people off the street.
January 16th, 2008 at 5:15:40 PM
I work in a restaurant where people want to see the nicer high priced wines on the list but God forbid they pay the price! I see it as giving them something to complain about, it’s amazing that they still drink here and they will chose a house wine even on 1/2 price bottle night.
January 17th, 2008 at 3:13:22 PM
Apparantly I’m a Strange One. If I’m given a wine to taste, blind, and I like it, I’ll ask how much it is. If I find out it’s cheap, as well as good, then I like it even MORE. Obviously I’m overjoyed that I can afford it.
January 20th, 2008 at 10:19:07 PM
This was an interesting study – novice wine drinkers were given a very small amount (1 mL?) of wine from a plastic tube.
I can’t imagine that the outcome really surprises people (well, the actual brain changes are surprising). Most people do not have time (or the motivation) to become educated about wine. So they need a sense of validation – whether it be scores from Parker or a “premium” price tag – to feel comfortable. One can only hope that people learn to become comfortable with their own palates over time.
January 21st, 2008 at 2:08:29 PM
I think it would also prove interesting to have an experiment like this: People blindly taste some wines. Next, they order the wines from favorite to least favorite. After that, one of two things could happen.
1) The subjects could then try to assign the wines into categories of “expensive” or “inexpensive”. The results between the ratings and price categories could be compared.
2) Instead of having the subjects assign the wines into a cost category, the researcheres simply try to see if there is an objective correlation between the prices and the ratings that the subjects gave them. Could be done with both “ordinary” people, as well as those with a more refined palate. It would more interesting to see all of the conditions outlined above completed, and then see a comparison between them all. Would people automatically assume that a higher rated wine is more expensive than the others when asked to assign a price? Would the ranks correlate with the objective pricing?