Expensive Wine Tastes Better
January 18th, 2008 4:18 PM
Or at least you think so!
A study conducted at Caltech shows that “increasing the price of a wine increases subjective reports of flavor pleasantness as well as blood-oxygen-level-dependent activity in medial orbitofrontal cortex, an area that is widely thought to encode for experienced pleasantness during experiential tasks”. In other words, those expensive wines could simply be duping you. The next time you think something tastes better after seeing the price tag, then you might want to try a double-blind taste test just to make sure.
The full abstract is online for free, but the article unfortunately isn’t. However, there are a number of articles out there with more data from the study. The one at News.com is probably the best.
