Article: Raising Prices Enhances Wine Sales

Apparently, raising the price really does make the wine taste better. At least that seems to be the result of a taste test. The part of the brain that reacts to a pleasant experience responded more strongly to pricey wines than cheap ones — even when tasters were given the same vintage in disguise.

The whole article is here.

Footnote: With me it's the words "free" and "gratis" which stimulate those same pleasure zones.

Dear Gary,

And better, when tasting totally blind, they preferred the wine that really sold for $5 best of all! The expensive wines only tasted better when they were known to be expensive. Who knows if this is replicable, but it doesn't surprise me. At least in the kinds of wine that I drink on a regular basis, (say $20 or less), style is a much better predictor of my pleasure than price.

Walt

Apparently, raising the price really does make the wine taste better. At least that seems to be the result of a taste test. The part of the brain that reacts to a pleasant experience responded more strongly to pricey wines than cheap ones — even when tasters were given the same vintage in disguise.

The whole article is here.

Footnote: With me it's the words "free" and "gratis" which stimulate those same pleasure zones.

I put photos of a (related) item on this on the WineLovers.ning site - I should have linked to it before.

EDIT - picture 1 is the news item - pictures 2 and 3 are close-ups to read

http://i182.photobucket.com/albums/x202/dac100/wine/enjoyment1.jpg

http://i182.photobucket.com/albums/x202/dac100/wine/enjoyment2.jpg

http://i182.photobucket.com/albums/x202/dac100/wine/enjoyment3.jpg

To be readable the pictures are too big to put on this page - so I've put the links to my PhotoBucket site

Cheers, Dave C.

Steve Slatcher posted a link to the actual study paper on other thread (Shaji's You can Fool ..)

No surprise here. This is precisely why, when you're after fair and impartial evaluations, you do blind tastings. The desire to think that one has got what one has paid through the nose for is only natural. Unfortunately, price and quality are not always in sync.

I've always been proudest of the wines I've found that were inexpensive but marvelously delicious.

-Paul W.