Does the pricey wine really taste better?

Question

At a tasting, guests rate a 90 dollar wine well above a 15 dollar wine and conclude the expensive one is genuinely better. A skeptic suspects the price tag, not the wine, is doing the work.

How would you design a test that removes the effect of expectation, and what does it reveal?

Accepted Answer

Expectation shapes perception. Knowing a wine is expensive raises what you expect, and that expectation alone can lift the reported taste, the same expectation effect that drives placebos in medicine. When tasters can see the price or label, their score blends the wine's real qualities with the story the label tells them. The fix: a blind tasting. Pour both wines into unmarked, identical glasses so tasters cannot tell which is which, ideally shuffling the order for each person. Now the only information reaching them is the wine itself. Any remaining difference in scores reflects taste, not pr…

Does the pricey wine really taste better?

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