Picture yourself buying wine. You’re going up and down the aisles, scoping out the different vintages from countries around the world. Maybe you’ve read an article or two online about some really fantastic red or maybe you’ve gotten a vague recommendation from a friend; you kind of know what you want but not really.
Then you see it. It’s got a really funny, clever name and an aesthetically-pleasing label. Robert Parker’s given it a 92 and an anonymous LCBO staff-member has weighed in with his two cents, praising it for its taste and price-range. Everything about this wine screams you; the image you have of yourself and what you and your friends would be drinking as they all compliment you on your uncanny ability to find the perfect wine for any given situation.
And so you buy it. You take it home, open it up and after taking an appreciative sniff, pour yourself a glass. My god, you think to yourself, I’ve done it again. This tastes really good. You may even be right but you’re probably not conscious of how everything you went through leading up this point may have influenced your perception of the wine’s flavor profile.
A study by Michael Siegrist, a professor at the Institute for Environmental Decisions, and his post-doc, Marie-Eve Cousin from ETH Zurich, put forward a hypothesis that people are influenced by information they receive about a wine before they taste it and this affects their sensory experience of said wine.
“The analysis of the test results revealed that the test people who had been given the ratings with 92 or 72 points before the tasting rated the wine differently to those who weren’t given the Parker rating until afterwards. In the first two groups, the test people who had been given negative information rated the wine considerably worse than those who proceeded on the assumption that the wine was good. Those who knew beforehand that the wine had been given 92 Parker Points also found the wine better than those who only discovered the rating after they had tried the wine.
The information not only influences the sense of taste, but also how deep we are prepared to dig into our wallets: again, the test people with negative advance information were prepared to pay the least.”
Of course we respect those we perceive to be experts, particularly when we feel we might be out of our depth as so many people do with wine. I’d like to extend this to include labels. Indeed, another study by Cornell University found that people given the same wine alternatively packaged as both from California and North Dakota rated the California label as being of higher quality and enjoyed it better on the whole.
While both studies have their flaws, I believe they reveal an essential truth: people often buy their wine on a hunch and they like to have cursory bits of information that back up their choice, whether it’s a nice label, a recommendation or established point of origin.
For myself, the first thing that catches my eye is the label. If I like it, I’ll probably pick up the bottle and see what varietal it is, what year it was produced and where it came from. Mentally, I’ll attempt to cross-reference this with my memories of other wines consumed in the past that may overlap but more often than not, I’ll look at the price tag and take a chance. More often than not, I don’t end up hating the wine. Sometimes, if I’m really lucky, I really love it and that’s the bottle I’ll come back for.
Do you find yourself falling in love with labels like I do or do you really do your homework?
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(Photo taken from smcgee’s Flickr Photostream.)
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