14. Do More Expensive Wines Taste Better?

Episode Summary

Executive Summary: This episode examines whether wine experts really have superior palates or whether price and prestige simply shape perception. Through anecdotes and experiments by Steve Levitt, Brian DeMarco, and Robin Goldstein, it argues that untrained or uninfluenced tasters often rate wines similarly regardless of cost, while expert systems and awards may be vulnerable to bias, signaling, and commercial incentives.

Main Topics: Levitt’s lowbrow palate and skepticism about wine (Priority: 4/5): The episode opens with Steve Levitt’s preference for cheap food, aversion to wine, and the idea that liking inexpensive tastes may be economically advantageous. Harvard blind tasting experiment (Priority: 5/5): Levitt recounts a blind tasting among Harvard Society of Fellows where expensive and cheap wines received nearly identical ratings, suggesting experts and scholars could not reliably distinguish quality. Price perception and expectation effects (Priority: 5/5): Brian DeMarco’s informal tasting shows that when people are told a wine is expensive, they tend to like it more, implying price information changes sensory experience. Wine Spectator award hoax (Priority: 5/5): Robin Goldstein’s fake restaurant, Osteria L’Intrepido, won a Wine Spectator award, raising questions about how much prestige awards actually reflect real tasting quality versus procedural compliance or advertising value. Rigorous blind-tasting research on wine prices (Priority: 5/5): Goldstein presents data from 17 blind tastings showing that expensive wines were not preferred and that even experts struggled to tell costly wines from cheap ones. Broader critique of expertise and status in consumption (Priority: 4/5): The conversation widens from wine to how consumers rely on expert intermediaries and prestige signals in markets where they lack firsthand knowledge.

Key Arguments: Developing a refined palate can be costly and may not improve enjoyment if price and status distort judgment. Blind tastings can reveal that expensive wines are not consistently preferred over cheap wines. People often rate wine differently when they know or believe it is expensive, showing strong expectation effects. Expert systems and awards can function partly as marketing or advertising, not purely as objective assessments. The Wine Spectator hoax suggests that prestige awards may be easier to obtain than consumers assume. Untrained or low-expectation drinkers may enjoy wine more because they are less burdened by status and analysis.

Data Points: Cost of wine at Harvard dinners: about $60 per meal - Levitt estimated the Society of Fellows’ wine expense per dinner as the basis for his proposed abstinence track Annual savings from abstaining: about $3,000 - Levitt calculated that refusing the wine could justify a salary supplement Expensive wines in Levitt tasting: close to $100 bottles - Two wines used in the Society of Fellows blind tasting Cheap wine in Levitt tasting: around $8 bottle - The inexpensive comparison wine poured into one decanter Blind tasting decanters: 4 decanters - Levitt used two expensive wines, one cheap wine, and one repeated expensive wine Wine Spectator application fee: $250 - Goldstein argued the fee functioned like a paid advertising mechanism Goldstein tasting dataset: 17 blind tastings - Used for his academic paper on price and wine preference Goldstein observations: more than 6,000 observations - Aggregate data from multiple tastings Goldstein participants: more than 500 people - Included amateurs, sommeliers, and winemakers Price range tested: $1.65 to $150 per bottle - Range of wines in Goldstein’s empirical study Retail comparison in DeMarco tasting: $20 bottles - The same wine was labeled as $50 and $10, though both retailed at $20 Prestige wine claim: five to ten times more expensive - Described as the price gap between wines served at Society of Fellows dinners and cheap wine

Pivotal Quotes: "The data could not have cooperated more completely with my hypotheses." — Steve Levitt: Levitt reacting to the results of his Harvard blind tasting "My takeaway is that expert sources in the media are trusted too much and that they're prone to abusing their positions of power as a way of making money." — Robin Goldstein: Goldstein explaining his critique after the fake restaurant award hoax "The more they thought about it, the more they intellectualized it, the more they decided there were differences to the wine." — Brian DeMarco: DeMarco describing how price labels affected tasters’ judgments

Implications: Listeners should be skeptical of price-based quality cues and prestige awards in wine. For the industry, blind testing and transparent standards matter more than branding. The episode suggests consumers may enjoy wine more when freed from expert anxiety and status signaling.