Skip to content
Have an account?
Login
or
Register
  • About
    • People
    • Fellows
    • Tastings
    • In the News
    • Awards
      • Christophe Baron Prize
      • AAWE Scholarships
      • AAWE Awards of Merits
    • Downloads
    • Contacts & Copyright
  • Journal
    • Online Journal Member Access
    • Online Journal Library Access
    • Editors
    • JWE – All Issues
    • Submission Guidelines
  • Working Papers
  • Meetings
    • 2023 Stellenbosch
    • 2022 Tbilisi
    • 2019 Vienna
    • 2018 Ithaca
    • 2017 Padua
    • 2016 Bordeaux
    • 2015 Mendoza
    • 2014 Walla Walla
    • 2013 Stellenbosch
    • 2012 Princeton
    • 2011 Bolzano
    • 2010 Davis
    • 2009 Reims
    • 2008 Portland
    • 2007 Trier
  • Membership
Menu
  • About
    • People
    • Fellows
    • Tastings
    • In the News
    • Awards
      • Christophe Baron Prize
      • AAWE Scholarships
      • AAWE Awards of Merits
    • Downloads
    • Contacts & Copyright
  • Journal
    • Online Journal Member Access
    • Online Journal Library Access
    • Editors
    • JWE – All Issues
    • Submission Guidelines
  • Working Papers
  • Meetings
    • 2023 Stellenbosch
    • 2022 Tbilisi
    • 2019 Vienna
    • 2018 Ithaca
    • 2017 Padua
    • 2016 Bordeaux
    • 2015 Mendoza
    • 2014 Walla Walla
    • 2013 Stellenbosch
    • 2012 Princeton
    • 2011 Bolzano
    • 2010 Davis
    • 2009 Reims
    • 2008 Portland
    • 2007 Trier
  • Membership
DONATE
  • Data
  • Jobs & Programs
  • Data
  • Jobs & Programs
Home
»
JWE-Articles
»
Journal of Wine Economics Volume 2 | 2007 | No. 2
»
Debunking Critics’ Wine Words: Can Amateurs Distinguish the Smell of Asphalt from the Taste of Cherries?

Debunking Critics’ Wine Words: Can Amateurs Distinguish the Smell of Asphalt from the Taste of Cherries?

Roman L. Weil
Pages: 136-144
Abstract

I report my tests of the hypothesis that wine consumers cannot match critics’ descriptions of wines with the wines themselves. My results suggest that testers’ ability to match the des­crip­tions with the wines is no better than random. I report on more than two hundred observations of wine drinkers who engaged in the fol­lowing experiment. The drinker faces 3 glasses of wine, two of which con­­tain identical wines and the third contains a different wine. I record whether the drink­er can distinguish wines—whether he can tell the sin­gleton from the doubleton and, if the drinker can distinguish, which wine he prefers. I present the testers with descriptions of the two wines writ­ten by the same wine critic/reviewer. I find that 51 per­cent of the testers who can distinguish the wines correctly match the description of the wine with the wine itself. The per­cen­tage match­ing does not significantly differ from the expected-if-random half. I have recorded the sex of the testers and I can find that men can dis­tinguish the wines better than random, but women can­not. The dif­ferences are so small, even though significant, however, that the Exact F test detects no sig­ni­fi­cant dif­ference be­tween the ability of men and women in these experiments. The results span tests of wines from Bor­deaux, Bur­gun­­dy, the Rhone, Spain, Germany, and Aus­tral­ia; the tests use only still wines, all less than ten years old.

Subscribe to our Email List

You can cancel your subscription at any time.
SUBSCRIBE HERE

Contact

AAWE
Economics Department
New York University
19 W. 4th Street, 6FL
New York, NY 10012, U.S.A.
Tel: (212) 992-8083
Fax: (212) 995-4186
E-Mail: karl.storchmann@nyu.edu

AAWE

Journal

Working Papers as a List

Membership

Videos

LINKS

Fifthsense

JWE at Cambridge University Press

Liquid Assets

Stuart Pigott

Privacy & Cookies Policy

Privacy Policy

Cookies Policy

Twitter Facebook-f Youtube

© AAWE 2021 - All rights reserved