Good news for snobby wine drinkers during these trying economic times. “The Wine Trials,” a new book by food critic Robin Goldstein finds you don’t have to spend a lot of money to get a good wine.
Goldstein got 500 volunteers (experts and everyday drinkers) to do a blind taste test of 540 wines, priced between $1.50 and $150, then rate them on a scale of bad, OK, good and great.
100 wines under $15 rated higher than the more expensive brands. For example, a $9.99 bottle of Domaine Ste. Michelle Brut outscored a $150 bottle of Dom Perignon. A bottle of “Two-Buck Chuck” outperformed a $55 bottle of Stags’ Leap Artemis. Several box wines even made it into the top 100.
And to further prove that people are hung up on price tags, scientists from Caltech and Stanford did a separate wine study earlier this year. Volunteers were asked to try Cabernet Sauvignon priced at $5, $10, $45 and $90. The catch was there were only two kinds of wine, they were just marked with different prices. Newsweek reports:
The $90 wine was presented at its real price as well as marked down to $10, while the $5 bottle was also marked up to $45. The results were surprising: price appeared to dictate pleasure. The wine drinkers liked the $90 bottle best, the $5 bottle least. When the same volunteers were offered sips without price data, though, they preferred the $5 option.Once again, perception becomes reality. But the reality is, we are dealing with some tough economic times, so go with what tastes good to you. If a bottle of Boone’s Farm or Arbor Mist floats your boat, the rest be damned if they don’t like it.
