Why does expensive wine seem to taste better?

Because knowing the price changes expectations, attention and enjoyment. The price acts as an anchor: tell someone a wine is expensive and they tend to rate it higher, even when it's the same wine.

How do you run a fair blind tasting?

Have someone who isn't tasting pour and keep the key, serve all the wines the same way in shuffled order, and write down rankings before revealing the labels.

Real life · Blind testing

Do Expensive Wines Taste Better? The Blind Tasting Old Ted's Cider Won

Q: Do expensive wines taste better?

In blind tastings, mostly not for ordinary drinkers. A 2008 study of more than 6,000 blind tastings found that price and enjoyment were weakly and slightly negatively related for non-experts; for people with wine training, the relationship was not negative.

About 5 minutes · No trading required

The short version: when people know the price, expensive wine tastes better to them. When they don't, the difference largely disappears. A 2008 study of more than 6,000 blind tastings found that for ordinary drinkers, price and enjoyment were weakly and negatively related: on average they liked pricier wines slightly less; for people with wine training the relationship wasn't negative. The price on the label changes the experience. That's why fair tests hide the label, and why a blind tasting is the cheapest experiment you'll ever run.

For Aunt Linda's birthday dinner, Uncle Gary brought a $60 bottle of red and gave a short speech about it. Words used included "structure", "finish" and "you can taste the terroir". Linda's sister Brenda had brought an $8 bottle from the supermarket. Gary described it as "fine for cooking".

Mia suggested a blind tasting. Old Ted, who had come for the cake, asked if he could enter his cider, which he poured from a lemonade bottle he'd brought "just in case". Gary agreed, on the grounds that it would make the result more obvious.

The blind tasting

Mia poured three glasses for each of the eight guests, labelled A, B and C, and nobody but Mia knew which was which. Everyone ranked them.

The $8 wine came first for 4 of the 8.
The $60 wine came first for 3.
Old Ted's cider came first for 1: Gary, who described it as "surprisingly structured".

Eight people is far too small a sample to prove anything about wine. But it's a perfectly good demonstration of what happens when you hide the label.

First-place votes in the birthday blind tasting (8 guests)

The $8 wine4

The $60 wine3

Old Ted's cider1

Far too small to prove anything; the 6,000-tasting study is the evidence.

What 6,000 blind tastings found

In 2008, a group of economists published a study in the Journal of Wine Economics based on more than 6,000 blind tastings of wines across a wide range of prices. Tasters didn't know which wine was which or what it cost.

For ordinary drinkers, the link between price and rating was weak and slightly negative: on average, they liked more expensive wines a little less.
For people with wine training, the relationship was not negative: experts did, on average, rate pricier wines no worse.

This doesn't mean expensive wine is a scam. Experts may detect things others don't, and rarity and reputation are worth something to some people. It means that for most of us, a lot of what we taste is the label.

Why the label tastes so good

Expectations change experience. Tell someone a wine costs $60 and they'll pay closer attention, look for the "structure", and find it. The price works as an anchor: a number that arrives before the wine and shapes how the wine is judged. Studies with brain scans have even found that people report enjoying the same wine more when told it's expensive. The wine didn't change. The story did.

That's why serious tests of anything, from medicines to wine to fertiliser, hide which is which. Without a blind comparison against a control group, you're testing the label.

How to run your own blind tasting

1. Hide the labels. Someone who isn't tasting pours and keeps the key.

2. Taste everything the same way. Same glasses, same temperature, same order shuffled for each person.

3. Decide before you look. Write down your ranking before the reveal, so the labels can't change your mind afterwards.

Where it costs you money

Expensive funds, premium advice and famous managers come with labels too. The only fair test is blind: compare what they deliver, after costs, with a cheap alternative over the same period, without the brochure. Very often the cheap index fund is the $8 wine: less exciting to talk about, and just as good or better once you stop tasting the price.

The moral

Gary accepted the result, after asking for a second blind tasting, then a third. In the third, he identified the $60 wine correctly, which he said proved his palate, until Mia pointed out that he had guessed one of three correctly once in three tries, which is exactly what guessing produces. Old Ted has started selling his cider as "award-winning". The award, he says, came from a tasting panel that included a man who brings $60 wine to birthday parties.

The birthday tasting is fictional and far too small to prove anything. Study findings are from Goldstein et al. (Journal of Wine Economics, 2008). Educational content, not financial advice.

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