Do More Expensive Wines Taste Better?

by Wizdom

January 17， 2012

西方葡萄酒业发达，同时还酿造了一批经济学家，他们专门成立了自己的协会（American Association of Wine Economists)，有自己的专业杂志，Journal of Wine Economics。这可不是一般的行业杂志如酿酒品酒杂志，它刊登的都是peer reviewed 严格的经济学论文。其中一篇，题目是“Do More Expensive Wines Taste Better?” 在2008年发表，作者们都是Harvard，Yale等一流大学的教授。他们发现，一般人根本品不出贵酒和便宜酒的区别。葡萄酒的价格与评价打分甚至呈负相关，即品酒者对越贵的酒的评价反而越低。

下面是更多的细节：

Data

The data set contains 6,175 observations from 17 blind tastings organized by Robin Goldstein. The blind tastings took place in the US between April 2007 and February 2008. In total, 506 participants tasted wine flights composed from 523 different wines. The wines were presented in a double-blind manner, so that neither the person serving the wine nor the person tasting the wine knew the identity, price, or any other characteristics of the wine aside from its color. The price per bottle ranged from $1.65 to $150. The prices are average retail prices and were obtained from www.wine-searcher.com. The wines represent a broad variety of types (e.g., red, white, rosé, sparkling), country origins, and grapes.

The participants were unpaid volunteers from 21 to 88 years of age.

Results

Individuals who are unaware of the price do not derive more enjoyment from more expensive wine. In a sample of more than 6,000 blind tastings, the correlation between price and overall rating is small and negative, suggesting that individuals on average enjoy more expensive wines slightly less. In other words, unless they are experts, individuals who are unaware of the price enjoy more expensive wines slightly less. For individuals with wine training, however, they find indications of a non-negative relationship between price and enjoyment.

Conclusion

These findings suggest that non-expert wine consumers should not anticipate greater enjoyment of the intrinsic qualities of a wine simply because it is expensive or is appreciated by experts. Their results indicate another reason for why the average wine drinker may not benefit from expert wine ratings: he or she simply doesn’t like the same types of wines as experts. This is consistent with Weil (2001, 2005).

其他相关研究：

Plassmann et al. (2008) test whether marketing actions such as changes in the price can influence the experienced pleasantness of a product such as wine. Testers are given different wines that they are told differ in price. In reality, some of the wines are the same but simply presented with different prices. Prices are found to correlate positively with experienced pleasantness, measured through both subjective reports and fMRI scans.

There is, however, some research expressing scepticism towards wine ratings and their use for the average wine drinker. Quandt (2007) shows that many wine ratings do not actually convey any information, nor is there substantial agreement in ratings by experts. Consistent with this view, Weil (2007) investigates whether wine descriptions by experts convey information to wine consumers. This is tested by having testers match wine descriptions to wines. In a similar setup to Weil (2001, 2005), tasters are asked to distinguish the odd one out of three different glasses of wine. Only about 50% of the participants in Weil (2007) can distinguish the odd one out, and of those who manage to do it, only about half can correctly match a wine critic’s description of the wine with the wine itself – which is no better than a random guess.

参考文献：Goldstein et. al. 2008. Do More Expensive Wines Taste Better? Evidence from a Large Sample of Blind Tastings, Journal of Wine Economics, Volume 3, Number 1, Spring 2008, Pages 1–9。其他文献也可在该文中找到。

Best Wine Magazine, Decanter: https://www.decanter.com/

Journal of Wine Economics : https://www.wine-economics.org/journal/