Does expensive wine taste better?

A few anecdotal observations:

- That people can't tell the difference between a $22 bottle and a $119 bottle does not surprise me; I've long suspected wines in the $100 - $n000+ range were priced arbitrarily or down to esoteric factors.

- Is $22 considered "cheap"? e.g. I would imagine the majority of people may be able to easily tell the difference between a $119 bottle and a $5 bottle.

- I would not say expensive wine tastes "better" but rather that it tastes "specific". Some may prefer the taste of cheaper wines, but most would prefer the expensive taste. Take for example a Lambrusco: it's an inherently "cheap" wine type, despite being DOC, largely due to being young and made from high-yield grapes. But it also has a very specific flavour that would never be associated with expensive wines. But it's not "worse"; it has it's place and people much prefer Lambrusco in certain contexts.

Asking whether an expensive wine tastes better than cheap ones is about as fatuous and asinine as asking whether an expensive computer is better than a cheap one. Where do you draw lines for comparison, the bottom 10% to the top 10% or say between the ranges of 10-20% and 70-80%? Also the taste for wine is often an acquired taste, so at what point in your learning experience do you start your comparison?

If one has to answer the question without any further information then the answer is an unequivocal yes but there's lots of caveats--too many to discuss here.

Some decades ago I had the misfortune to be a part of a wine tasting group run by a well known and highly respected wine aficionado and we tasted some of the generally agreed very best including Burgundies, Bordeaux first growths, etc. At one blind tasting we tasted all the 1945 first growths.

Those in the know will understand the significance of the '45 moniker. There's no doubt expensive wine of this caliber taste very significantly better than cheap wine (some would say that's an understatement). Incidentally, an interesting phenomena one notices with wines of such high quality is that there's no such thing as a person who doesn't like them--unlike good but lesser quality wines where experience counts for one's discernment, even inexperienced neophytes instantly know they're better.

Above, I mentioned that tasting truly excellent wines to be a misfortune because I now know how remarkably good and very different they are from not only cheap wines but also from otherwise excellent wines that are say ~10x cheap ones. Those remarkable wines have permanently damaged my palate, there's no way that I can afford to drink them again, nor am I ever likely to taste them again as their price has increased conservatively 10-50x since I tried them-- nevertheless their memory remains. For me, these days, even good wine tastes pretty ordinary.

(Incidentally, the pick of those '45s for me and most others there was the Haut Brion. Don't ask me to describe it as I don't have the vocabulary.)

Expectations determine experience. And humans ground their experience in each other.

A very clear example of this is my experience of introducing people to Surströmming.

You could find countless videos on Youtube of people doing the "Surströmming challenge". They all come expecting the "smelliest food in the world", barf bags ready, giggling friend holding the camera. The results are predictable. People start barfing as soon as the can is opened.

If the novice instead comes to a proper meal setting, with plates and cutlery rather than the barf bags, the experience will be different. Nobody else at the table is freaking out. so why would you? When the smell hits (it's similar Kimchi) maybe the novice will make a comment about it, but that's all. Not everybody will take to Surströmming on their first try, though many do. But I've never seen anything even close to the Youtube freakouts. Expectations matter a lot.

I think wine pricing is bullshit but to be fair there are two factors that can make a difference and which apply in other domains as well.

One is the "fat part of the bell curve" of taste. Consider music: people listen to music for a lot of reasons, like lyrics, lack of lyrics, beat, ability to fade into the background... Many options will satisfy, and the simplest signifiers are adequate. That's why popular headphones emphasize bass these days, for example.

And there's nothing wrong with that! In the case of wine, people who aren't really into it will simply look for signifiers for what they're in the mood for (I'm in this group): more acidic, more sweet, bubbly-and-I-don't-care-otherwise which will naturally cause the popular wines to "cluster" around one of these factors. The product is essentially a commodity.

There will be a small number of people who really get into it ("sophistication" is the technical term but unfortunately it has terrible connotations) and can parse out the differences, and who might seek out a second order factor they like. But those people are always, by definition, going to be in the minority.

The second factor of course is Vleben. This also applies well beyond wine, such as the whole "prosumer" segment, "SUV"s build on automotive chassis, etc.

This discussion comes up a lot, with people gleefully deciding that they derive the absolute truth from the data and that all wine is just bullshit bingo.

Aquired sophiscated tastes come with experience and social coaching. Sugar tastes "good" to everyone for fairly well established biological reasons, but when someone has been educated on the identification of finer tastes and to enjoy them- they will reject sugary food for something more nuanced and varied. Some people never recieve this education, which leads to 40 year olds drinking sodas.

In the same sense, many people never get the introduction to the finer points of a good glass of wine, and thus stick to simpler tastes. Wine pricing, particularly among the highly competitive world of home retail wine selections (how much will someone part with for a "nice bottle of evening wine") where most sell at say, $10 but the best price to performance is around the $22 mark. With particularly nuanced and hard to produce wine tastes ganering the high costs. Not literal comparative "good taste"

I think there's a noticeable difference between a $5 and $10-15 bottle, but much less difference between a $15 and $100, and zero between $100 and $250+.

There have been studies that claim to show most American consumers can’t tell the difference between Coke and Pepsi. This is baffling to me. In my soda drinking days, I was fine with both, but the difference is pretty clear to me (and I have single blind tested it a few times.)

Could there be a significant cohort of people who are unaware they have a diminished sense of taste due to age or other factors?

Perception of almost anything can be influenced in many subtle and not-so-subtle ways. For most people, wine is considered a challenging topic to understand in depth, and so most feel they are initially at serious disadvantage before taking a sip. Price is something everyone understands...and so is a powerful influence. Trying to suppress that is awfully hard. I would say that some expensive wine could taste better...subjective aspects of taste aside. Some wines begin with hand-harvested grapes...and only the very best of those make it into the barrel. Huge amount of labour and huge amount of grapes that don't make the grade. Perhaps the resulting wine will taste better...better grapes mean better wine. Perhaps it is only marginally better...but the costs to get that incremental benefit are enormous.

Most people could probably tell apart wine by style (somewhat), not by price, which is if not arbitrary then a result of factors that don't necessarily reflect "better taste", and non-avid consumers wouldn't agree on what "better taste" means anyway (see: broad preference for milder tasting coffee over super-strong medium-roast with sharper, fruitier notes). Some styles of wine are somewhat more expensive in general, and in my experience usually taste better. Often regionally protected wines can fall into this category, e.g. Barolo, Chianti, Amarone. I don't really find these expensive, but I expect wine-lovers would tell you you can't find a $5 vino as nice as a $40 one. Beyond that it's quickly diminishing returns and status-seeking.

I like my Bordeaux wines from France. One time I obtained a Pomerol. It was so very much better than my normal 'great' wines.

I later discovered that it was also nearly four times the price.

So, yes, expensive wines do taste better. But are they good 'value for money'? I doubt that.

If it does, I don't want to know. There are a few hobbies where developing a sense of taste seems to be really expensive, and wine and whiskey are among them.

I believe Betteridge's Law of Headlines applies here.