From the AgEcon site (University of Minnesota, Research in Agricultural & Applied Economics) comes a gem of a research paper "DO MORE EXPENSIVE WINES TASTE BETTER? EVIDENCE FROM A LARGE SAMPLE OF BLIND TASTINGS"
The abstract is quoted immediately below:
Individuals who are unaware of the price do not derive more enjoyment
from more expensive wine. In a sample of more than 6,000 blind
tastings, we find that the correlation between price and overall rating
is small and negative, suggesting that individuals on average enjoy
more expensive wines slightly less. For individuals with wine training,
however, we find indications of a positive relationship between price
and enjoyment. Our results are robust to the inclusion of individual
fixed effects, and are not driven by outliers: when omitting the top
and bottom deciles of the price distribution, our qualitative results
are strengthened, and the statistical significance is improved further.
Our results indicate that both the prices of wines and wine
recommendations by experts may be poor guides for non-expert wine
consumers.
Please feel free to join in with recommendations of your personal favourites.
I will start off by
recommending both the Merlot and the Cabernet Sauvignon from Nk'mip
Cellars (Okanagan, B.C.) which range from about 18-30 dollars.
And now if you will excuse me, their are a number of wine snobs that I am acquainted with to whom I simply must forward this to.
