(Previously in Swedish on this webbsite 2017)
Read the other day in some Swedish newspaper (2017-08-18) about a new study that shows that the taste of wine itself means less for how we experience the drink than our idea of what it costs. The more expensive we think the wine is, the better we think it tastes. In other words, a cheap wine are perceived to taste better than an expensive wine if you shift the price tags on them. There are also many other studies that show the same thing about beer, food and chocolate. The conclusion the researchers in this particularly studie draw is that we really experience that a expensive drink tastes better irrespective of how it actually tastes. The brain deceives us.
I think few people would drink wine if it did not contain alcohol. After all, it’s a drink you have to “learn” that it tastes good. The fact that we started drinking wine from the beginning was probably partly because that the alcohol in the wine kills bacteria, which made people less sick compare than if they drank water that often was contaminated.
One explanation for that we are fooling ourselves here, I think, is because of that wine itself isent a tasteful drink. But we believe that there are people who can experience this and can understand the difference between a good and a bad wine. This characteristic is associated with the upper class. Wine, like many other things, become a status marker in the social hierarchy, particularly important for those who aspire to belong to a social group/class or other status group to which they does not naturally belong. We all strive to make a class trip, one way or another. Having the “right” taste is an important part of this journey.