> One of the points he made was that there are absolutely wines which are objectively better and worse and that experts can reliably tell them apart. He had met enough experts who could identify a vineyard and vintage blind to know there was something to it. But sitting on top of that there is a frothy market that is driven by fads, speculation, and hype.

I'm sure there are people that can identify different tastes. I question whether or not those tastes are a sign of objective quality, or just something they've been conditioned to think of as good.

An interesting test would be of people who have never tasted wine before, and have no sense of what a "good wine" is supposed to taste like. But in my experience, most people who aren't used to alcohol will simply find all wine distasteful.

You can actually see this in action when you see different cultures interact. For instance, the baijiu has a similar position in Chinese society as wine does in the West. There's an enormous price range, and a complex range of flavors and aromas. But almost every Westerner I've met found the taste abhorrent when they first tried it (though a small few eventually were able to develop a taste for it).

So though people in different cultures can acclimate themselves to what is currently considered to be good in their culture, I don't think that's the same thing as a certain taste being objectively good.