Can you tell the difference between cheap and expensive wine
Can you tell the difference between cheap and expensive Wine?
Well it depends on a few things….
The Bold and the beautiful
Earlier this year I attended a family wedding at Boschendal – a stunning venue, and wine estate, in Franschhoek. The starters were well paired with a selection of white wine and quality speeches. As the evening progressed, I noticed the waiters bringing around a bottle of red. More specifically. a dark, ruby red. It had a density to it. After the waiter filled my glass, I swirled, sniffed and sipped. I could immediately tell that it was not an ordinary table wine. There was complexity to it, it was silky in texture, it was bold and it was beautiful.
For context, Boschendal wines range from around R120 for a white wine, and from R300 for red. Not cheap, but not necessary all high end wine. So why did this wine make such an immediate impression? I felt I had to enquire. The waiter explained that it was one of their reserve wines that one would need to request at the farm should you wish to make a purchase, and it retails for a little over R1000. This made sense, a higher end wine with a high end taste. But is it always like this?
Finding the difference
Before continuing, I should point out that Boschendal is not sponsoring this post, in fact, we do not stock Boschendal so it doesn’t benefit us in any way to talk about how enjoyable the wine was, but it provides context.
While many external factors will influence how we taste both cheap and expensive wine, there are a couple studies that help answer the question of whether we can actually tell the difference.
- A famous study done by Frédéric Brochet: Wayback Machine
caused ripples through the Wine world when he subjected 57 individuals to two significant tests. One involved providing the same white wine in two glasses with the one glass of wine dyed red. You guessed it, subjects used red wine descriptors for the dyed white wine.
The other was an average wine dispensed into cheap and expensive bottles. The subjects gave them opposite ratings, favouring the expensive bottle. Although not clear, it was said to have been Oenology science (study of wine) students but not necessarily experts or sommeliers. - In another study with 6000 blind tasters, it illustrated that unless someone is a wine expert, they may on average enjoy more expensive wine, less!
Extract from the study: “These findings raise an interesting question: is the difference between the ratings of experts and non-experts due to an acquired taste? Or is it due to an innate ability, which is correlated with self-selection into wine training?”
So where does this leave you? Are you influenced by the price of the bottle, are you trained to tell the difference, have an acquired taste or an innate ability?
In our next post we will cover all the factors that influence the taste of wine… that is, if you had the exact same wine but at different occasions, would it taste the same? Make sure you sign up to Wine Talk to be notified once released.
Conclusion
The art of tasting Wine is complex. Some will be able to pick up incredible nuances on the nose and palate, and others might not. If you have the luxury of being able to afford higher end / fine wine, then consider doing some blind tasting yourself between affordable and more expensive Wine. You may tell the difference, and if you can’t it means you can save a lot of money on your Wine selection! Consider some of these wines (HERE) if you want to try higher end Wine. Reach out to us if you have any questions.