On Taste

In a previous post I mentioned that Norman Mailer was not a writer particularly to my taste. Just after writing that I came upon an account of a couple of interesting experiments that speak to the subjectivity of taste — in this case the taste of wine. The following passages are from an article by Jonah Lehrer on “The Subjectivity of Wine.”

In 2001, Frederic Brochet, of the University of Bordeaux, conducted two separate and very mischievous experiments. In the first test, Brochet invited 57 wine experts and asked them to give their impressions of what looked like two glasses of red and white wine. The wines were actually the same white wine, one of which had been tinted red with food coloring. But that didn’t stop the experts from describing the “red” wine in language typically used to describe red wines. One expert praised its “jamminess,” while another enjoyed its “crushed red fruit.” Not a single one noticed it was actually a white wine.

The second test Brochet conducted was even more damning. He took a middling Bordeaux and served it in two different bottles. One bottle was a fancy grand-cru. The other bottle was an ordinary vin du table. Despite the fact that they were actually being served the exact same wine, the experts gave the differently labeled bottles nearly opposite ratings. The grand cru was “agreeable, woody, complex, balanced and rounded,” while the vin du table was “weak, short, light, flat and faulty”. Forty experts said the wine with the fancy label was worth drinking, while only 12 said the cheap wine was.

It’s hard to judge these experiments without knowing more about how they were conducted. But it’s amusing to see, from the comments to the original post, the reactions they produced.