10/20/08 Price Perception

Welcome to Vine to Wine this is your host Linda Moran. Today we are going to discuss our perceptions when it comes to the price of wine and its relationship to its quality. Earlier this year you may have heard about a study, in which, the brains of individuals were scanned while they were tasting wine. They were given identical glasses of wine but were told that the prices of the wine were significantly different. The brain scans showed the portion of the brain registering pleasure showed significantly more activity when they tasted a wine they believed to be ninety dollars as opposed to the very same wine when they believed it to be five dollars. Although, from my point of view the results are no big surprise, I am left wondering why we have so little faith in our own palate. I am wondering if this knowledge might affect a wine judge. I mean it is not a controlled response is it? Your brain is reacting involuntarily to the information you are given. When it comes to wine I think we make many of our choices based solely on our impressions of what the quality might be. For example another study showed women are the primary purchaser of wine in the grocery stores and they look for attractive labels. Because the label is appealing does it make the wine taste better to us? Does the color or weight of the glass used to package the wine influence us? Yes, most likely. But unless we have tasted the wine before, at that time that's all we know about it. So we buy it and hope it is as good as it looks. Email your wine questions to Linda at vine to wine dot net and thank you for joining me on today's Vine to Wine.