The wine delusion

Economics and Philosophy
PHIL S­161
___________________________
The wine delusion
Why prices and ratings don’t matter
Praveen Vaidyanathan
HARVARD UNIVERSITY
Summer 2014
Professor Frank Thompson
HARVARD UNIVERSITY
Department of Philosophy
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Abstract
People can never tell whether a wine is a lemon or not until they open the bottle.
Even if they do, they certainly can't get their heads around it. For wine comes in just
two colours, and yet, gives people over 15,000 options to pick from; more choice
than any other product. Such is the complexity of wine that people lack the
confidence to complain. So, how do people go about buying a bottle of wine? Their
best guess is to rely on two things: price and ratings. People assume that the more
expensive wine will taste better than the cheaper wine. People assume that the wine
recommended by critics will taste better. It seems logical to assume that the more
expensive the wine is, the better the critics will think of it. Reasonable as it may seem for
other markets, for wine, it just doesn’t work. This paper uses behavioural economics and
empirical evidence to prove that. It explores preferences, choices and risks in picking wine.
Whilst suggesting refreshing ways for people to see wine like never before.
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A bizarre market
The wine market works in a peculiar way. Sellers know more about the product than
buyers do, causing an imbalance in power (Reiss, 2013, p. 233). Economists call this
principle, ‘information asymmetry’. Because people can’t access the quality before buying
it, their decisions involve risk. Which would mean that low­quality products could dominate
the market (Akerlof, 1970). This theory was predicted by the Nobel Prize­winning
economist George Akerlof. Akerlof called it ‘lemons theory’, applying it to the used car
market. The word lemon refers to defective cars sold on the used car market. The word
cherry refers to good cars sold on the used car market. People can never really tell whether
a car is a cherry or a lemon before buying it (Veseth, 2007). So their best guess is that it is
of average quality. The price they pay reflects the average quality. Realising that they can
never get a justified price, cherry owners refrain from selling. Which would leave the market
with lemons (Akerlof, 1970). The wine market is quite like the used cars market, only more
bizarre. People can never tell whether a wine is a lemon or not until they open the bottle.
Even if they do, they certainly can't get their heads around it. Because wine is complex; so
much so that people lack the confidence to complain (Sutherland, 2013). So, how do
people go about buying a bottle of wine? Their best guess is to rely on two things: price
and expert opinion. People assume that the more expensive wine will taste better than the
cheaper wine. People assume that the wine recommended by critics will taste better than
the rest (Dubner, 2010). But according to the British psychologist Richard Wiseman (cited
in Sample, 2011) who has been testing those assumptions over and over again, among
experts and amateurs alike, the answer is clear: the chances of anyone identifying a wine
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as expensive or cheap based on taste alone is 50:50. The same odds as flipping a coin.
So bizarre is the wine market that is refuses to accommodate even the most basic law of
economics. Which is, people buy more when the prices are low and less when the prices
are high. Economists call this principle, ‘law of demand’. Because wine is unlike a typical
good, its audience, the ‘loyals’, the ‘snobs’ and the ‘conspicuous’, often violate the law of
demand while making decisions. For instance, the loyals may not buy more or buy less with
change in prices; the snobs may not buy more when prices fall; the conspicuous would buy
more when prices rise (Thornton, 2009, pp. 219­21).
The elixir of snobs
There are over 15,000 wine products to choose from. No other industry offers
people so many choices (Thornton, 2013, p. 3). People believe these products have
different characteristics. Such is its toll on the human capacity, leaving people confused.
Perhaps its confusion is an intended illusion, a trick. For wine comes in just two colours:
red and white. And yet, it seems so hard to pick one. So hard that the English poet
Kingsley thought ‘Red or white?’ were the three most depressing words in the English
language (Sutherland, 2014). So, why is wine still popular? Why are people taking so much
trouble drinking a drink so confusing? One that people can never get their heads around,
let alone have the confidence to complain. Perhaps the wine market thrives itself on
confusion at the expense of clarity. A startup named Vinetrade set up a simple site for
people to buy and sell wines online. Vinetrade soon had to shut down because people
resisted ordering wine online. Turns out, that the whole online thing killed the joy of being
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part of an elite group that used fancy words like ‘tannin’ and ‘oak’ (Mayassi, 2013). So, why
is confusion revered? What is the correlation between confusion and popularity? In popular
culture for instance, there is a meme on the theme nerds are cool. It works because nerds
seem to have a certain IQ, too hard for the average Joe to understand. So cool that
Hollywood filmmakers have been ditching superheroes for nerds (Hu, 2013). Similarly, the
British adman Rory Sutherland thinks that wine’s popularity may be Freudian, ‘not in the
sexual sense, but in the sense of what the Austrian psychologist Sigmund Freud called der
Narzißmus der kleinen Differenzen or ‘the narcissism of small differences’ (Sutherland,
2013). As Sutherland (2013) puts, ‘The advertising business is often criticised for
exploiting this bias: to provide customers with a superficial sense of uniqueness endless
trivial product variations are created to provide “an ersatz sense of otherness which is only
a mask for an underlying uniformity and sameness”.’ In other words, the absurd complexity
of wine may be essential to its popularity. For its drinkers to show status and
connoisseurship, it is necessary for the market to be absurdly confusing to navigate
(Sutherland, 2013). Which creates a sense of snobbery among wine drinkers; the
superficial culture that is, wine. This peculiar narcissistic urge opens up an opportunity for
people to advertise their own discernment, of what good wine is.
Is wine genuine?
So, what really is good wine? How do people know what good wine is? What
makes one wine better than another? The Château Lafite Rothschild Bordeaux is
considered by many to be the world’s best wine. Thomas Jefferson was among its
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admirers. Jefferson’s 100­year old Lafite was recently sold at an auction for $156,000, the
most expensive sale ever (Mayassi, 2013). A recent bottle commands just over $400; older
bottles cost three times as much or more. Wine experts talk of its taste as if it were an
expensive piece of art (Mayassi, 2013). Because people assume a linear relationship
between price and wine, they would believe a Lafite should taste different. But it’s unclear
anyone can actually tell the difference between a $2000 Lafite and a $2 Two­Buck Chuck.
Wisemen (cited in Sample, 2011) confirms that the probability of someone picking fine
wine from cheap wine is at 47%. The same chances as flipping a coin. The American
economist Robert Goldstein, along with his Swedish counterparts, Anna Dreber and Johan
Almenberg, published a paper in the Journal of Wine economics that drew results from
over 6000 blind tastings. Findings confirmed a few important observations: there is no
correlation between price and the perceived quality of wine; there is no correlation between
quality and enjoyment of wine; neither amateurs or experts can consistently differentiate
between fine wines and cheap wines, nor identify the flavors within them (Goldstein et al.,
2008). If a $10, $100, and $1,000 bottle all roughly taste the same, what explains the
difference in their price tags? Maybe it’s a sign of wealth to impress others with expensive
things. Maybe it’s an occasion for which something pricey feels special. But the underlying
truth is that it is about expectations. It turns out that people who spend more on something
expect to enjoy it more (Berdik, 2012, p. 78). Is this expectation rational or justified? In a
cheeky study, the French economist Frederic Brochet tested a brand of table wine on wine
experts. Cheeky in that it reflected a model of behaviour in which reactions depend on the
way things are presented. Behavioural economists call this principle, ‘framing’ (Bendle and
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Chen, 2014). Brochet served the same wine disguised in two different bottles, one cheap
and one pricey. Experts praised the wine served from the pricey bottle as ‘excellent’,
‘flavoursome’ and ‘balanced,’ whilst rejecting the wine served from the cheaper bottle as
‘weak’, ‘flat’ and ‘unbalanced’ (Brochet, 2001). Beneath the framing lies a reason,
expectations. Expectations are built into our brain’s tasting gear. People have thousands of
taste buds, which are but blunt instruments. These can tell if something is sweet, sour,
bitter, salty or savoury. Their main purpose is to know what’s edible, not distinguish flavours
(Berdik, 2012). Besides tasting things, people can smell. Smell is the result of our constant
sniffing of thousands of chemical compounds. What people smell is both the anticipation
and fulfillment of a wine’s promise. It is easier to fool the nose than the mouth. The smell
that people know of is the combination of many, many chemicals. There are 213 known
odor compounds in cheddar cheese and 466 in grapes according to Maarse (cited in
Berdik, 2012). People’s reaction to these depend on odor concentration and context. In
one study that tested the same smell, cued with the words ‘cheddar cheese’ or ‘body odor’,
the former was found to be more pleasant. Even in the absence of odor, when prompted
with the same words, people found ‘cheddar cheese’ better (Araujo et al., 2005). The truth
is, people don’t need to overthink about the attributes of a wine to enjoy its flavour or check
if it’s worthy of the price. So, why not disregard flavour specifics and look at taste
preferences?
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For the sake of justification
Do people like what they like, or do they like only what they expect to like? How
much of our preference is already decided even before the first sip? The behavioural
economist Dan Ariely asked the question, ‘Do we dislike what we expect to dislike?’ Dan
Ariely’s team tested beer with a dash of vinegar on college students. When the students
were told about the vinegar before they drank the beer, 70% didn’t like it. When the
students were told about the vinegar after they drank the beer, more than 50% liked it. The
test tells us that expectations not only change what we think we should enjoy, but
significantly changes our experiences itself (Ariely et al., 2006; Berdik, 2012). Marketers
spend billions on advertising to craft emotional appeals towards brands. But prices are just
numbers. People assume that expensive stuff is better. Behavioural economists call this
principle, ‘price­quality heuristic’ (Berdik, 2012). Berdik (2012) feels that people use price
as a guide. That is, if something is expensive, then it is likely to be of higher quality than
something that is cheaper. Hence, people tend to justify a pricey product. Basically, they
follow the crowd, and end up paying for the premium like everybody else does. Quality
expectations may be fairly accurate on products with available objective measures of
quality. For experiential goods such as wine, the price­quality rule is less accurate (Berdik,
2012).
The unnatural
Unlike many of our basic consumer biases, the belief that price signals value isn’t
evolutionarily natural. The American economist Laurie Santos has done years on research
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on this area by teaching monkeys to use money. Santos’ (2006) ‘monkeynomics’ research
found that monkeys share most human consumer quirks . Like humans, monkeys fear
potential losses more than they value potential gains of the same size. Behavioural
economists call this principle, ‘loss­aversion’ (Bendle & Chen, 2013, p. 18). Like humans,
monkeys value something more once they own it than they would before owning it.
Behavioural economists call this principle, ‘endowment effect’ (Bendle & Chen, 2013, p. 4).
The only thing monkeys don’t seem to share with us is the price­quality heuristic. Monkeys
seem to understand what price means, but are not affected by price in the same way
humans are. They know more quantity would cost more. They know to buy their favourite
treats on sale. But, they don’t think one treat is inherently better just because it costs more
(Santos et al., 2006). Which suggests that our overestimation on price may not be as
deeply ingrained as other consumer biases. Meaning, our expectations on price can be
easier to overcome. Or as Santos (2006) puts, ‘if we just have the right experiences and
pay attention to our real preferences.’
The flight from expectations
So, people like what they expect to like, and their preferences can be fundamentally
influenced by price and labels (Thornton, 2013). But, what really are our preferences? Have
our real preferences been swayed by critics, society and others? Are preferences shaped
by our own expectations the only preferences we have? Turns out, dividing real from
shaped preferences is hard (Berdik, 2012). Research from the economics faculty of
Stanford and Caltech found that pleasure from expectations is real. Subjects were told to
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taste five different wine bottles, priced at $5, $10, $35, $35, $45 and $90 respectively.
There were however only three bottles, with the $5 bottle labelled as $45 and $90 bottle
labelled as $10. The results, as noted by Plassmann et al (cited in Berdik, 2012), showed
that the more expensive the wine, the more they liked it. In other words, increasing the price
of the same wine significantly increases the pleasure one gets from it. These results mean
that our brains connect sensory properties with expectations on how it should be. Knowing
something beforehand about the quality of an experience gives us valuable additional
information (Berdik, 2012). But our brains can’t evaluate this value in detail. Because it
requires time, effort and thought. Our brains tend to default to mental shortcuts. Behavioural
economists call this principle, ‘cognitive bias’ (Moesgaard­Kjeldsen, 2014). It sets up
expectations based on the pre­experience. However, if our expectations were well beyond
our actual experience, there would be a clash. Behavioural economists call this principle,
‘contrast effect’ (Berdik, 2012). Which means, an average wine will taste even worse if
people expected it to taste really well, or paid a lot for it. The contrast effect works exactly
the same in opposite too. So, perhaps the only way to find our true preferences is to avoid
expectations.
The truths
Blind tasting has been a saving ground, especially when it comes to dealing with
problems of expectations on price versus quality. Goldstein (2008) published a manifesto
in The Wine Trials with three useful arguments. First, expectations, especially those based
on price, rule our evaluation of wine. Goldstein (2008) writes, ‘By questioning wine prices,
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you will become less of a slave to expectations and more of a student of your own palate.’
Goldstein’s (2008) study revealed that everyday wine drinkers actually enjoyed expensive
wine less. That is, people who are unaware of price do not get more enjoyment from
expensive wines. Second, experts and critics who guide our wine preferences are
notoriously inconsistent, unreliable and untrustworthy. This is an issue, especially because
peoples’ wine preferences are largely swayed by critics’ preferences. Critics rate wines
with scores on gold­standard magazines like Wine Spectator and Wine Advocate, seen
as bibles of the industry. The American wine critic Robert Parker is undisputedly the
world’s most influential person in wine, and has been since the last three decades. Parker
also happens to be the editor­in­chief of its leading magazine, Wine Advocate. The Parker
100­point score is the standard rating system for the wine market. So powerful is Parker
that he wasn't exaggerating when he once said, ‘I can make or break a wine.’ In 2008,
Goldstein went on to undercut the authority of such experts with a stunt that garnered
international press. He put in the $250 application to Wine Spectator for a badge called
the ‘Award of Excellence’. It is awarded to restaurants that have the best wine lists. He set
up a fake restaurant, a website, a phone number with a Milan address. Its fake menu
featured a list of the worst­rated wines in the last two decades, reviewed by the very own
Wine Spectator. Despite the size and obviousness of the error, his fake restaurant
received an ‘Award of Excellence’. The only voicemail on his fake restaurant's phone
number was left by Wine Spectator’s advertising department, to announce the news and
enquire if they wanted to place an ad in their magazine. Critics are not only inconsistent
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and unreliable, they are also untrustworthy, says Goldstein (2008). To call them fake
wouldn't be an understatement.
Speaking of taste
So, how sensitive are our palates to the taste expectations of wine descriptions?
Consider this description by Robert Parker:
…is a real treat as this cuvee flirts with perfection. Already revealing some pink and amber at the edge, the
color is surprisingly evolved for a wine from this vintage. However, that’s deceptive as the aromatics offer
incredible aromas of dried flowers, beef blood, spice, figs, sweet black currants and kirsch, smoked game,
lavender, and sweaty but attractive saddle leather­like notes. Full­bodied and massively endowed, with
abundant silky tannins, it possesses the balance to age for 30+ years.’ (McFadden, 2014)
When an item promises multiple benefits, it is less convincing than items that
appear to do only one thing. Behavioural economists call this principle, ‘goal dilution’
(Sutherland, 2009). If only wine critics and writers knew about it. What could everyday
drinkers make of such flowery descriptions? If anything, they do one thing well: confuse. So
they’re actually doing a good job, if confusing people is the real intention. But if the real
intention is to help people match words with wines, they’re far from helpful. The American
economist Roman Weil ran tests to see if people could match words with wine. Weil (cited
in Berdik, 2012) gave subjects three glasses of wine, two of which were the same; along
with two descriptions written by the same critic. Simple as it may seem, only half of them
matched it right. They would have done just as well flipping a coin. Unlike the blunt signal of
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price, flavour expectations of such flowery descriptions is nothing but a joke to the human
capacity. Besides, nothing expresses approval like a Parker score of 90­plus or a gold
medal, both of which correlate to higher prices. In other words, it would mean logical for the
best­tasting wines to pick up 90­plus scores and medals. But to Goldstein, that’s far from
the truth. Wine Spectator makes $1 million in application fees for its ‘Award of Excellence’
every year. And Goldstein’s own stunt made it quite clear: money talks. To take it a step
further, Goldstein (cited in Berdik, 2012), along with economists Craig Riddell and Orley
Ashenfelter, compared Wine Spectator­style ratings to ‘Zagat’ ratings, which is done much
the same way, except that it is awarded to restaurants for the best food menu. Results
showed that for each point awarded, the price of a meal rose up to 48% (Berdik, 2012).
Things take time
Goldstein’s (2008) price­signal study, which placed results onto a 100­point ratings
scale, found that pricier wines averaged 7 points lower among everyday drinkers and 4
points higher among experts. Which means, when people are freed of expectations, their
preferences would differ from that of the experts. So it seems perfectly reasonable to
assume that critics’ tastes may well have been corrupted. If people could pick wines purely
on blind tasting, would they still prefer expensive wines? Goldstein has helped launch a
wine research institute in California’s Napa Valley. Whose aim is to, by bringing together
behavioural economists and wine enthusiasts, explore the gap between subjective quality
and price in the wine industry. It seeks to compare the effects and relationship of a wine’s
region, price, bottle type, sensory characteristics and preferences across people, experts
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and winemakers. Peoples’ tendency to default to others opinion explains the popularity of
critic ratings and reviews despite economics research (Thornton, 2013), which is working
to undercut the value of expert authority by revealing its blatant inconsistencies (Goldstein,
2008). Goldstein (cited in Berdik, 2012) believes that recommendations need to be
‘starting points’ not ‘ending points’ put to further testing. Trying to figure out our real wine
preferences does take time. But that doesn’t mean people should fall prey to the
pseudo­preferences of critics. Which Goldstein (cited in Berdik, 2012) sums up tastefully,
‘There’s a huge amount of bullshit in the wine world.’ Which takes us to the third argument
in his manifesto, blind tasting is the only way to find out our true preference (Goldstein,
2008). Just not the type blind tasting experts seem to follow.
Intuition versus data
A Paso Robles winery once sent the same wine to a wine competition under three
different labels. One was rejected as ‘undrinkable’, the other won a double gold medal
(Sutherland, 2013). The State Fair competition in California is the world's biggest in wine
judging. Its judges taste wine blindly, free from expectations, fortunately, staying true to
Goldstein’s manifesto. But since 2003, they fatefully agreed to test their consistency, and
report findings in the Journal of Wine Economics. Now, there is overwhelming evidence to
show that their long­term judgements based on blind preferences were inconsistent
(Berdik, 2012). They have repeatedly tried to update, redefine or find new ways to find
consistency in their results. They have tried many times, some half­way through
competitions, to find that elusive consistency. No matter how hard or how many times they
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tried, their inconsistent results didn’t seem to budge. They still voted to retain and eliminate
the same wines. Berdik (2012) confirms that even the small minority of consistent tasters
were often wildly inconsistent the next. Without expectations that are based on price, expert
palates seem lost. To a point where the State Fair organisers were compelled to post a
video interview titled, ‘Are Wine Competitions a Hoax?’ featuring its chief judge, G.M.
Pucilowski. It’s clear that the wine market conducts itself on methodologies that are neither
rigorous nor accurate (Goldstein, 2008). Two decades ago, the American economist Orley
Ashenfelter offered the wine market a compelling tool using the power of simple statistics
to outdo the world’s most accurate critics (Kahneman, 2011, p. 223). Ashenfelter came up
with a formula that could predict the future prices of wine based on data, not human
intuition. His formula was simple:
∆ price =
­12.15 + (β1 * Winter rainfall) + (β2 * Average summer temperature)
+ (β3 * Harvest rainfall) + (β4 * Age of Vintage)
It created an uproar in the wine market, with Robert Parker calling the economist ‘an
absolute total sham’ (New, 2013). Perhaps Parker and his fraternity were concerned with
the plight of the fancy world of wine ratings and its pricing should an economist’s formula
beat a critic’s intuition. Unfortunately for them, Ashenfelter’s formula turned out to be
extremely accurate (Kahneman, 2011, p. 224). Kahneman (2011) confirmed that the
correlation between its prediction and actual prices was above .90. Ashenfelter’s formula
found praise from the Nobel­prize winning psychologist Daniel Kahneman (cited in New,
2013) who feels, ‘Whenever we can replace human judgement by a formula, we should at
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least consider it.’ Algorithms are beating intuition in chess, jeopardy and diagnosis these
days (New, 2013). But the wine market continues to be sceptical toward such innovation,
sticking to its flawed methodologies and conventional tasting techniques.
Following the herd
It is debatable whether wine critics or competitions are giving out scores and
medals with the intention of helping people deal with uncertainty or of quality. The viticulture
researcher Maynard Amerine spent decades understanding wine quality, growing
conditions, winemaking techniques, colouring, flavour, storage and so on. The State Fair
rating system was designed on Amerine’s work (Berdik, 2012, p. 95). Amerine (cited in
Berdik, 2012) believes that judges’ personal preferences do not come into play whilst
judging, or are consciously ignored. He sees wine judging as a legitimate profession with
fixed, common and consistent standards. Both Amerine and Pucilowski agree that experts
and people don’t look for the same thing when they taste wine. But both have contradicting
views on the real value they bring to people. Pucilowski feels that the reason why people
might pay attention to wine critics or competitions is to see if they agree with the word of
the expert. In other words, to check if preferences match. Amerine thinks otherwise. He
feels that the reason why people might pay attention to wine critics or competitions is not to
match preferences, but to pick quality (Berdik, 2012). But why should people expect their
own preferences to match with the preferences of anyone else, or of experts? Especially
when experts themselves, with all their fancy experience, can’t seem to evaluate wine
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quality consistently. So, how can people actually figure out what they really like or dislike?
What is the type of blind tasting that Goldstein hopes would actually make sense to people.
Being humble
Many sceptics believe that blind tasting is nothing without wine’s context. The
context includes everything from the wine, the food, the company, the occasion to the
setting. They agree that some wines may be better than others, but the satisfaction people
get from them depends on the context, which is discounted with conventional blind tasting
sessions. Even Amerine believes that sensory evaluation is the true measure of wine
(Berdik, 2012). It is the quality of the wine in the glass in the context that matters. Which
matches with the aim of Goldstein’s manifesto: personal preference. As it does with the
democratic views of the New York Times wine writer Eric Asimov, who feels that opinions
of critics and blind tastings should not be revered with authority they don’t possess. Asimov
(cited in Berdik, 2012) hopes for a consensus, when he said, ‘let’s stay humble with wine.’
He wants a culture of being comfortably ambivalent rather than being sure of others,
anyone, or ourselves for that matter. Goldstein’s take on being humbled is for people to
challenge themselves. He wants people to find the abilities and limitations of their palate.
Goldstein believes that this knowledge is enough to sift through nonsense confidently,
instead of trusting experts. Enough to make for great armour along with our real
preferences, which we know evidently from Santos’ (2006) ‘monkeynomics’ and Caltech’s
(2008) contrast effect research, are independent of expectations.
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Putting on the sceptical hat
Blind tasting may not take people to their true preferences. But finding true
preferences can be a work­in­progress even if it’s never found. If any, it opens up people to
knowing how much they don’t know about what they really like (Berdik, 2012). Likes and
dislikes are part of our own selves. Expectations may offer suggestions to our preferences;
some useful, some not so much. Just as the Greek philosopher Heraclitus believed, ‘The
only thing that is constant is change,’ our preferences, too, are anything but consistent.
They are constantly being changed, evolved, influenced, and by nature, can certainly do
with some questioning and discovery. At the heart of questioning and discovery is trial and
error (Sutherland, 2014). In The Black Swan, the Lebanese­American mathematician
Nassim Taleb explains the human tendency of trial and error in finding simplistic
explanations retrospectively. The trial and error approach has defined human progress,
from steam engine to aspirin. The human act of discovery through trial and error is what
Taleb (cited in Sutherland, 2014) calls ‘stochastic tinkering’. The notion that people make
progress on their own without really understanding how it works. In the notoriously complex
wine market, where even expert preferences are about as consistent as flipping coins, trial
and error seems like a reasonable way for people to find better and more genuine
preferences (Sample, 2011; Sutherland, 2014; Berdik, 2012). How is Taleb’s use of the
phrase ‘teaching birds to fly’ so different from unreliable experts telling people ‘how to
drink’ or ‘how or enjoy’ a glass of wine? By using purchase data on more than 77 million
shopping trips over 7 years, the Dutch economist Bart Bronnenberg matched shoppers’
actual choices to their knowledge and found an interesting correlation: the more informed
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people are the more likely they are to pick store brands (Bronnenberg et al., 2014). If we
flipped it around a bit, it makes sense the other way too. That is, if people simply
recognised the wine market’s absurd complexity as an illusion to stay fancy, disregard
advertising appeals and fluffy citics, the unfair bias against cheap wines would become
redundant. While this isn’t the case for many other experiential goods, it certainly holds true
to wine. Whether people find their true preferences or learn anything about wine at all, they
can at least be happy by merely knowing that a $10 wine can give them a $100
experience. Or as Goldstein and Asimov believe, will motivate people to strip experts of
their undue reverence, stay humble about not knowing wine, and be bold enough to wear a
sceptical hat when it comes to picking wine.
­­
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