Vox demonstrates that expensive wine isn’t preferred by drinkers until they are “trained” to like it. The distribution of gold medals in competitions is not only close to random, but one study found that professional judges often can’t tell what they’re drinking. Moreover, they tend to favor expensive-tagged tipples, even when intentionally spiked to taste worse. [via Digg]
On the other hand, the narrator’s quip about 5x as expensive not being 5x as good— hilarious, every time!—vaguely reflects a desire that matters of taste can still be measured in some objective way.
In that vein, see the legendary and fully objective “Beschissen Curve” which explains, scientifically, how good the wine is, and which I totally didn’t just make up.