Want the public to like your product better? Raise the price.
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They asked 20 people to sample wine while undergoing functional MRI’s of their brain activity. The subjects were told they were tasting five different Cabernet Sauvignons sold at different prices. However, there were actually only three wines sampled, two being offered twice, marked with different prices. A $90 wine was provided marked with its real price and again marked $10, while another was presented at its real price of $5 and also marked $45.
The testers’ brains showed more pleasure at the higher price than the lower one, even for the same wine, Rangel reports in this week’s online edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. In other words, changes in the price of the wine changed the actual pleasure experienced by the drinkers, the researchers reported. “Our results suggest that the brain might compute experienced pleasantness in a much more sophisticated manner that involves integrating the actual sensory properties of the substance being consumed with the expectations about how good it should be,” they reported.
I have often wondered about the psychological affect price has on perception. Studies have been done on bottled water vs. tap water, and there does seem to be some validity to this. Except when it comes to my brand of bourbon, in which case, I cannot be fooled.
I try to leave my brain at the door when trying a wine. It’s all about smell, taste, and look. Some of my favorite wines are from the more low-brow regions (Chile, Ontario, East Coast US). But, if you’re the type that rarely drinks wine, you absolutely could get stuck in the higher price = better wine mentality.
Oh yes there is a direct connection especially among those that don’t know wine and have some money.
And speaking of bourbon, well Tennessee Sour Mash really, I noticed the change when they changed Jack Daniels a few years back. It took me several months to figure out what was different (the alc content changed) but I knew it tasted different.
Nowadays Jack Daniels is rot gut. I stick to premium bourbons like Blanton’s.
My Bourbon of choice is Woodford Reserve. It goes down tasty and smooth. Some of the other rot guts (which cost much more) feel like drinking lighter fluid.
When I buy booze, I try to find something I enjoy AND priced reasonable. I enjoy the challenge of finding a great tasting wine in the liquor store bargain bin.
I’m not a connoisseur, so I probably would be suggestive and rate the higher priced wine as tasting better. And I’ll bet the test subjects were not connoisseurs. However, I would bet wine enthusiasts would not be fooled. Didn’t Dvorak once write for a wine magazine? What’s his thoughts?
I hate Kendall-Jackson, it tastes like Michael Jackson.
So what’s your bourbon, John?
I’ve tried several, but so far I’m still happy with a cheap bottle of Old Forester.
I’m no expert, but I drink alot. What you prefer to drink, we should all be experts, in fact, we are.
If you don’t like a particular wine, it is often too infused with tannins–comes from Oak aging, and a Frenchman of note said such premium wines tasted like one was kissing a tree, yet, many folks like it. But lack of tannin is my preferred wine and you get that with modern technology where wines are cured in stainless steel–ie, no oak, no wood, no tannins.
BUT–if you don’t like the wine you are tasting, add anything to it to dilute the tannins. Some use water, I prefer to mix my wine with some other wine. Love to see the snobs jump when I do that, but I have never found a wine that did not taste better mixed. Surprising it works so uniformly.
There are a few commodities that do in fact work in opposition to traditional supply and demand principles. One of those is perfume. The demand for perfume goes up when its price goes up contrary to all other products. It would appear that wine, to some degree, does the same although I bet a lot of that has to do with the sophistication of the tester’s palette.
I will say that I would have like to take said test. My experience has been that I can definitely tell the difference between a great wine, an average wine and material best used for dyes.
This is why I don’t drink the higher expensive brands of beer they are watered down, I will drink a old brand that is back and it naragansett. Have a gansett! too me wine is just a bunch of over fremented grapes people should stick with thunderbird, mad-dog 20/20, or the 70’s fav Boones Farm. High class wines folks!
For those of us old enough to remember when Sasson and Jordache jeans came out, dungarees were about $15 a pair. When designer jeans came out at $40, they sold like crazy and people started wearing them to clubs. Levy’s almost went out of business. Raise the price enough, people will buy it. If nothing else, some will do so just to show they can. Check out the new designer waters that sell for wine prices. On a scale of one to fucking ridiculous, they’re definitely fucking ridiculous. And, ridiculous is not enjoying it.
#7. RedZeppelin, John didn’t post this, I did. And I have a weakness for Makers Mark, so if the owners of that distillery are readers of this blog my mailing address is……..and please, do not send any Wild Irish Rose.
reminds me of an article in the local paper a few years ago. There was a discovery of a sunken ship from anchient times, if memory severs from about 3000 years ago. There was a shipment of wine onboard, intact bottles from 3000 years ago. The salvage company held a tasting of this wine. :)) Invited many wine critics to this event. One gave his assesment…. He said it tasted like horseshit!… but! he qualified it!!! it tastes like good horseshit!! :)) How does one of these so called wine critics know the difference between good horseshit or bad?? and can they really know wine???
#6
“I hate Kendall-Jackson, it tastes like Michael Jackson.”
So it looks white but it tastes black?
#8
“but I have never found a wine that did not taste better mixed. Surprising it works so uniformly.”
Isn’t all wines nowadays blended and homogeneized? *coughnapashit*
#13
“How does one of these so called wine critics know the difference between good horseshit or bad?”
Because, they are used to reciprocate ass kissing to the point that to many 2 yo Napa Valley wine is seen as something that tastes better than any 20yo non Napanised wine.
Same deal with cigars, you can get a darn good smoke for under a buck, and you can pay ten and get a real dog turd.
#15
Don’t buy Cuban cigars. Like with everything touched by populism now it’s nothing but PR.
Try the Honduran cigars like Amoroso y Maduro.
Cigars are breath fresheners for people that eat shit.
#16 – Angel H. Wong – Don’t buy Cuban cigars. Like with everything touched by populism now it’s nothing but PR.
But interns prefer Cuban.
Oops, sorry, McCullough. I didn’t spy your byline.
I’ve tried MM, but that’s one of pricier bourbons I’ve tried that didn’t impress me that much more than simple OF.
#13, Adm Fubar,
I wonder how they knew what horseshit tastes like in the first place.
I remember reading a few years ago about this Canadian experiment for beer drinkers. They all started off sober with several quite different brews, German, English, Irish, Canadian, and several disparate home brews and micro brews. Without being told what they were drinking, most chose the Canadian brews, the same as they usually drank.
Then they were allowed to drink a few beers and talk and discuss whatever. After a while they were given the test again. None of them could identify the same beer they previously liked. It was only the same dark, easily identified micro brewed beers that no one liked that could be identified.
Since then I have had the belief that if you don’t like what you’re drinking, just have a few and soon you won’t notice the difference.
#16
I’ve had “Cubans” (if they really were) and thought they were just hype. And no #18 they weren’t “interned”, and yes #17 my breath smelled better than feces. 🙂
I got a couple bundles of Tabamex maduro churchhills, made in good ole’ Mexico, pretty darn tasty haven’t had a bad burn yet – about a buck a stick on sale shipped.
Snobbery and money: an old, old case of two phenomena rising in direct proportion with each other.
Cheap red wine tastes much better when drunk in Italy.
I’m sure it’s all in my head but a whole lot of things are better when done in Italy.
Wine will taste better when the idiot FDA sees the light and removes the requirement to have preservatives added just before they’re shipped to the wholesalers.
#24, Greg,
Reminds me of the time a buddy and I got hammered on cheap wine in Montreal. It’s a little fuzzy but I think he ended up with the ugly one. I do remember being woken up around 3:00 the next day by his wife’s phone call asking if I knew where he was. Shit, I didn’t know where I was. She called me back about a half hour later screaming that I knew where he was all along. It turned out he told her that he was with me all night.
Yup. Cheap wine will do that.
I don’t have any stories like that from a week I spent in Montreal but that’s another city I really enjoyed.
I’d heard so often that French Canada was the worst of both Canada and France but I can not testify to that since I was treated well.
I don’t remember any wine stories but I do remember some really great eats there. I had one of the best bagels I’ve ever had in the Jewish part of town and once heck of a great fondue at a place that seemed to serve only that. We happen to be there during the Jazz festival and heard some really great music, too.
As for cheap wine — this discussion reminds me of what I learned when I lived in Central California.
Nondescript contract wineries are all over the place there and (as it was explained to me) much of the snooty high priced “Napa” label wine is actually made in places like Fresno and Modesto.
It was also explained to me that excess top-shelf wine can be dumped under no-name labels so that the premium labels don’t suffer from over-supply.
I don’t know how you find those hidden gems except to drink often and with an open mind!
I just finished off a jug of Carlo Rossi “Piasano” and I have to say, it tasted pretty good to me! I wouldn’t hesitate to serve it to guests and let them believe it’s an expensive wine.
(My wife had previously bought me a box of Franzia Cabernet and I ended up dumping a bunch of it down the drain. She said she liked it, though.)
I had a “beer tasting event” wherein each participant brought his favorite beer and our wives kept track of what we drank. At the end of the evening, No. 14 was the clear winner. This was done with 3 tastes of each beer so that getting drunk was averaged out.
No light or big name domestic beers were allowed.
After 3 hours, some nice crackers and cheese, and one visit by the cops, the winner turned out to be the left-over jug the ladies poured all the partials into.
So, yes, many fine wines are actually blends although oftgen of the same grape. For awhile now, my favorite is the Sangiovese (sp?) grape which is usually atleast 70% of the Chianti wines. Rhone Valley wines are growing on me though.
From time to time, you can google the premium wine sold under generic labels. Still more expensive than Modesto wines.
I am partial to single malt scotch whiskey. Like most things I go for where it all began and for whiskey that is Scotland.
When I can get it my choice for enjoying a drink is “The Balvenie” 15 year single malt scotch whiskey from a single cask which means its not blended and it is bottled by hand.
http://www.balvenie.com/
When drinking with friends Johnny Walker gold suffices until late into the evening where anything is good like Listerine. 😉
Speaking of Beer, in northern China a popular way to buy beer is in a bag!
Looks like fun! Offishur I only had a couple of bags…’hic’… 🙂
Cheers
This result is not surprising.
One of the things we were taught when young was the saying, “You get what you pay for”.
For anything that is hard for people to tell the difference in quality, they rely on that old adage to guide them.
For anything that’s perceived to be the same across all brands, people buy the cheapest one available.
In other words, if your marketing message is one of trendiness/sophistication/expertise, and you don’t do a terrible job on the product itself… you can charge people much more than your competitors and still win, even if it’s actually not much better or worse quality than your competitor’s products.