Putting fine wine to the test: Does advertising affect the taste?
Could wine aficionados be more driven by marketing messages than the plain facts? A study published in the Journal of Consumer Research tried to decipher whether misleading advertising affects the perceived taste of a good wine.
The appropriately-named Kathryn and Michael LaTour, both from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, provided wine fans with either accurate sensory descriptors or misleading ad talk prior to a tasting.
Later, some of the participants who had been given correct information were given the marketing spiel to see if it changed their judgement.
"We find that aficionados who received the accurate sensory descriptors formed stronger memories and were able to withstand persuasion from the misleading advertising, resulting in more accurate experiential memories," wrote the Latours.
They also concluded that fine wine differs from other consumer goods, where similar tests have shown that most brands perform more or less the same.
The study follows another test carried out recently by the Institute of Vine and Wine Sciences in Bordeaux, which found that wine stored in plastic containers oxidises far more rapidly than those kept in glass bottles.