Has wine gone bad?
It&#x27;s crazy how much of the wine world is an &#x27;emperor&#x27;s new clothes&#x27; kind of situation.<p>There was a study done a little while ago (<a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.caltech.edu&#x2F;news&#x2F;wine-study-shows-price-influences-perception-1374" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.caltech.edu&#x2F;news&#x2F;wine-study-shows-price-influence...</a>) which showed that people perceive wine very differently depending on price. Even if it&#x27;s the same wine. So somebody who&#x27;s told they&#x27;re tasting a $90 bottle will rate it much better than somebody who&#x27;s told they&#x27;re tasting a $5 bottle, even though they&#x27;re both drinking the exact same thing.<p>After all the uproar over Brochet&#x27;s &quot;The Color of Odors&quot;, I did a tasting with a few friends where I chilled red and white wines down to the same temperature, and had them try the wines blindfolded. Across 6 people who all considered themselves wine enthusiasts, it was pretty dicey even being able to tell a Merlot from a Sauv Blanc. Maybe it was my just my lame friends, or maybe I chose bad wines. Or maybe not.<p>Different professional wine tasters will rate a given wine extremely differently. And they&#x27;ll comment on different &#x27;subtle notes of chocolate&#x27; in a product that is entirely made of grapes and yeast.<p>I would be genuinely surprised if a double-blind test revealed that aging a particular bottle actually makes it taste better in a measurable way. Different, maybe. But if &#x27;better&#x27; is subjective, then it&#x27;s by definition not &#x27;better&#x27; in an absolute sense.<p>I enjoy a nice glass of wine, don&#x27;t get me wrong. But the culture around it is elitist and unscientific, and I&#x27;m glad to see winemakers trying to tear it down a peg or two.