Do more expensive wines taste better?
Here’s the article we published showing that most wine drinkers prefer cheaper wines to more expensive wines:
Do More Expensive Wines Taste Better? Evidence from a Large Sample of Blind Tastings (Journal of Wine Economics, Vol. 3, No. 1, Spring 2008). Robin Goldstein, Johan Almenberg, Anna Dreber, John W. Emerson, Alexis Herschkowitsch, and Jacob Katz.
Abstract: Individuals who are unaware of the price do not derive more enjoyment from more expensive wine. In a sample of more than 6,000 blind tastings, we find that the correlation between price and overall rating is small and negative, suggesting that individuals on average enjoy more expensive wines slightly less. For individuals with wine training, however, we find indications of a non-negative relationship between price and enjoyment. Our results are robust to the inclusion of individual fixed effects, and are not driven by outliers: when omitting the top and bottom deciles of the price distribution, our qualitative results are strengthened, and the statistical significance is improved further. These findings suggest that non-expert wine consumers should not anticipate greater enjoyment of the intrinsic qualities of a wine simply because it is expensive or is appreciated by experts.
June 23rd, 2009 at 2:54 pm
Makes sense to me – expensive wines tend to be more complex, and complexity tends to be an acquired taste. Simpler wines will please more people.
June 25th, 2009 at 11:53 am
[...] restaurant sent back a £18,000 magnum of 1961 Château Pétrus claiming that it was counterfeit, our wine experiments and others’ predict that few consumers—even wine experts—would be able to identify a [...]
June 26th, 2009 at 11:45 am
[...] restaurant sent back a £18,000 magnum of 1961 Château Pétrus claiming that it was counterfeit, our wine experiments and others’ predict that few consumers — even wine experts — would be able to [...]
July 1st, 2009 at 12:53 pm
[...] restaurant sent back a £18,000 magnum of 1961 Château Pétrus claiming that it was counterfeit, our wine experiments and others’ predict that few consumers — even wine experts — would be able to identify a [...]
July 2nd, 2009 at 4:57 am
[...] to expensive wines that explains these differences. (Quandt would likely doubt this, and the empirical evidence, as described in The Wine Trials, would be against it, [...]
July 6th, 2009 at 2:33 pm
[...] to expensive wines that explains these differences. (Quandt would likely doubt this, and the empirical evidence, as described in The Wine Trials, would be against it, [...]
August 18th, 2009 at 9:06 pm
[...] consumer’s ability to perceive the quality difference between the Schwinn and the Trek. In an experiment I conducted last year, about two-thirds of 62 consumers preferred an $11 Domaine Ste. Michelle Brut sparkling wine to a [...]
October 13th, 2009 at 7:52 am
[...] restaurant sent back a £18,000 magnum of 1961 Château Pétrus claiming that it was counterfeit, our wine experiments and others’ predict that few consumers — even wine experts — would be able to identify a [...]
November 23rd, 2009 at 8:09 am
Success is counted sweetest by those who ne’er succeed.
April 12th, 2010 at 6:44 pm
[...] Johan Almenberg and Anna Dreber, the Swedish economists with whom we collaborated on much of the experimental research behind The Wine Trials, helped us analyze the [...]