> And the same average joe benefiting very little if at all from paying too much. Its like buying La Ferrari which all experts praise, when all you need is to drive 80kmh to next town.
But that isn't usually why these studies are often referenced, and certainly wasn't what the OP meant. The argument presented is often that there is no difference between high-end wines and low-end wines, which seems to be demonstrably false. That's not the same thing as unless you're an expert, you won't be able to tell the difference.
The reality is that wine appreciation, like any field, requires experience and knowledge to build "taste." This is pretty obvious when it comes to other things - no one would suggest that you could understand or appreciate the nuances of a WW2 film without knowing what WW2 was, but somehow when it comes to matters of taste in art, food, etc., the totally-ignorant person's opinion is equal to the expert's.
I'd say it's far more likely that contemporary culture is aesthetically/phenomenologically illiterate.
Is there a good study out there showing that an expert can reliably distinguish between average and expensive wine? It should be quite easy to prove, but all I ever hear about are studies showing the opposite. Because there's a huge financial incentive in making people believe that expensive wine really tastes better, I think it's reasonable to be more skeptical of wine experts than e.g. WW2 experts.
But that isn't usually why these studies are often referenced, and certainly wasn't what the OP meant. The argument presented is often that there is no difference between high-end wines and low-end wines, which seems to be demonstrably false. That's not the same thing as unless you're an expert, you won't be able to tell the difference.
The reality is that wine appreciation, like any field, requires experience and knowledge to build "taste." This is pretty obvious when it comes to other things - no one would suggest that you could understand or appreciate the nuances of a WW2 film without knowing what WW2 was, but somehow when it comes to matters of taste in art, food, etc., the totally-ignorant person's opinion is equal to the expert's.
I'd say it's far more likely that contemporary culture is aesthetically/phenomenologically illiterate.