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Comment by Spellman | Hacker News Reader

re: red vs white wine, Nope! Not exaggerating!

Several studies have shown wine is crazy subjective, and both novices and experts have been fooled before by changing the colors (dye) and bottles. Most people also have trouble blindfolded unless they are particularly experienced.

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I've heard this one a bunch, but it seems to be really hard to find the source. The closest I have found was that it was a study done bye Frédéric Brochet for his Phd in oenology (did not know that was a word until today)

http://web.archive.org/web/20070928231853/http://www.academi... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blind_wine_tasting https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2011/10/you-are-n...

I don't really buy this, I'm an amateur wine snob at best, and blindfolded I had absolutely no trouble telling apart white wines and red wines. In fact, no one at my table of 4, the other 3 having less knowledge of wine than I do, had any trouble whatsoever with red v. white, and all of us were close to right with region or grape variety. The only kicker was a rose champagne which everyone thought was a prosecco.

From what I've read in this thread, I infer that the study involved telling blindfolded people that white was red, or vice versa, and people were induced to rationalize their perceptions. The classic Asch conformity experiments[1] did not prove people can't tell the length of lines, did they?

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asch_conformity_experiments

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