But maybe it’s not about the wine at all. Maybe you can actually taste the money. A 2008 paper found that telling people a wine cost more than it did resulted in more positive reviews from the drinkers. But, moreover, a higher faux price increased “blood-oxygen-level-dependent activity in medial orbitofrontal cortex, an area that is widely thought to encode for experienced pleasantness during experiential tasks.” More expensive wine may actually taste better, for literally no other reason than the price on its sticker.

I had a client that had a massive cellar and would give me a nice bottle as a bonus on a fairly regular basis. Bottles worth between $700 and $2,000. Bordeaux reds like Petrus, LaTour, LaFite Rothschild, Margaux, etc. I googled them before hand so knew what I was getting into, but did not have any respect for them as I drank them right away instead of saving them for a "special" occasion. So I do not think I had any subliminal predisposition to overrating them. All of them had extremely high Wine Spectator ratings. In my opinion about 60% of them were extremely good, 20% were OK and 20% crap. One was undrinkable as sometimes happens. I am not exactly stingy when it comes to treating myself but would say that none of them were worth the money.

But none of them compare to the $2 bottle of Bordeaux I pulled out of my backpack with a baguette and some cheese and pate on a hill in a park with a fling I had in France. For me, that one gets the best review. It is all about the experience one is looking for.

posted 2782 days ago