Higher wine prices boost drinking pleasure. Yes, that's right expectation of taste actually triggers activity in the region of the brain associated with pleasure (without regard to the actual taste).
An excerpt from the original Good Experience post I intended to post about:
... he served fifty-seven participants a midrange red Bordeaux from a bottle with a label indicating that it was a modest vin de table. A week later, he served the same wine to the same subjects but this time poured from a bottle indicating that the wine was a grand cru. Whereas the tasters found the wine from the first bottle “simple,” “unbalanced,” and “weak,” they found the wine from the second “complex,” “balanced,” and “full.” (original New Yorker article I've yet to read.)
Wine is growing on me but my original hesitation about the snobbery associated with it remains, albeit with some amusement.
[Usual caveat about it only being one study that needs to be replicated, etc., etc.]
