I’ve always felt that very few people can tell the difference between Trader Joe’s Coastal Cabernet and the Silver Oak Cabernet. Yet, the wine industry has somehow gotten people to pay more for a bottle of wine where the consumer can’t tell the difference in most cases. Niether can customers say with confidence that one bottle tastes 5X or 10X better than another bottle.On Christmas we had eleven people over and I decided to serve four bottles of wine and have people rank them in a blind taste. Now, eleven people isn’t a large enough sample size, but we can see some trends.
We opened a 2003 Chateau Montelena Estate Cabernet Sauvignon that retails for about $85, a bottle of Black Mountain Cabernet that sells for about $6, Trader Joe’s Two Buck Chuck Charles Shaw, and a $15 bottle of Cabernet called Bonterra.
My theory was that there would be a fairly even distribution of the rankings, and that most people cannot tell the difference in cheap wine from expensive wine.
I analyzed the data in two ways. First, I added up the total number of 1-4 rankings for each wine. The wine with the lowest score would be considered the best. The second way was to total up the number first, second, third, and fourth place votes for each wine. By both methods, the most expensive wine was chosen by a narrow margin each time. Black Mountain was the fourth choice by both methods.
However, the star of the evening was Charles Shaw for the bargain price of $2. 3/11 people selected Charles Shaw as their favorite wine in a blind taste test. They should be very happy. Two Buck Chuck had the second highest amount of first place votes. The Chateau Montelena had five first place votes. And every wine had at least one first place vote.
The big loser was Black Mountain that was criticized for a strong bite. While Charles Shaw was praised for being smooth. There were several experienced Charles Shaw drinkers that were very surprised that they ranked it highly. Then they started to debate that it could have been a good bottle of Two Buck Chuck and that the quality varies so much that sometimes you have to dump the whole bottle down the sink. I have to laugh at this. I think it’s possible that it could actually be a “better” bottle of CS that they don’t like since big cabs aren’t always super smooth, but they can be very robust and powerful.
Over the next holiday, I plan on asking people to bring a bottle of their favorite wine, or a wine that they have had a good emotional experience with and see if they can pick it out in a blind taste test.
The bottom line is I wonder how the wine industry has gotten people to pay more for wine where the products are so similar.
