Can a Tasting Note Make a Wine Taste Better?

You’re tasting a Pinot Noir and finding it pleasant enough. Then someone says the wine’s acidity suddenly lifts the wine just as the fruit fades. You return to the glass, looking for this effect, and there it is. The wine seems more lively. Did the description help you discover something you had overlooked? Or did the suggestion lead you to experience something that wasn’t really there? There is some reason to expect that latter. Research shows that expectations influence what we taste. Tell someone a wine is expensive and they often like it better. Is our susceptibility to suggestion making us taste the Pinot as more lively? But the alternative explanation is equally plausible. Wine is a complicated sensory object and we cannot possibly attend to everything happening in a wine at once. We direct our attention to some features and not others. Maybe you just missed that lift in acidity because you were focused on aromas. The tasting note encouraged you to focus on other sensations like…

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