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Higher wine prices boost drinking pleasure: study
Reuters ^ | Jan 14, 2008 | Clare Baldwin

Posted on 01/14/2008 4:22:00 PM PST by RDTF

STANFORD, California (Reuters) - The more wine costs, the more people enjoy it, regardless of how it tastes, a study by California researchers has found.

Researchers at the Stanford Graduate School of Business and the California Institute of Technology found that because people expect wines that cost more to be of higher quality, they trick themselves into believing the wines provide a more pleasurable experience than less expensive ones.

Their study, published on Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, says that expectations of quality trigger activity in the medial orbitofrontal cortex, the part of the brain that registers pleasure. This happens even though the part of our brain that interprets taste is not affected.

While many studies have looked at how marketing affects behavior, this is the first to show that it has a direct effect on the brain.

-snip-

(Excerpt) Read more at reuters.com ...


TOPICS: Food; Health/Medicine; Society
KEYWORDS: alcohol; oenology; wine

1 posted on 01/14/2008 4:22:01 PM PST by RDTF
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To: RDTF

I have one of those price sticker things in my house and I like to sticker my bargain basement $10 or less wine bottles with prices like $44.00 and $60.00 and when I have company over, I put these bottles on the table. I ensure I stay away from popular wines that my guests might recognize. They always say that the wine was fantastic.


2 posted on 01/14/2008 4:26:43 PM PST by SamAdams76 (I am 23 days away from outliving Nicolette Larson)
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To: RDTF

Opinions vary. I never enjoyed opening a bottle of expensive wine. Box wine works just as well.


3 posted on 01/14/2008 4:28:19 PM PST by RightWhale (Dean Koonz is good, but my favorite authors are Dun and Bradstreet)
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To: RDTF

I recall the day fondly, the day my self esteem literally zoomed through the roof.

I switched from Boone’s Farm to more expensive Ripple and the euphoria of the breakthrough just carried me away.


4 posted on 01/14/2008 4:33:32 PM PST by bert (K.E. N.P. +12 . Moveon is not us...... Moveon is the enemy)
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To: SamAdams76
Interestingly, this past Thanksgiving I bought a bottle of $25 red wine of French burgundy instead of the usual $10 bottle, thinking I'd splurge a little this year ... (yes, we're OK with French wine again:) ... anyway, we didn't finish the bottle, so there was some left over at Christmas. Upon tasting it at Christmas dinner, it was BLAAAHHHHHH (spiting it out) .... turned *really* sour, so poured the rest of it down the drain and opened up a new bottle of a 'different' $25 chardonnay, which we enjoyed (and finished off this time, wasn't going to let the same thing happen again! /laughs)

Anyway, the moral of this story is that the previous $10 red wines still held their own a month later, given the same circumstances, than than the 'splurged for' $25 bottle.

5 posted on 01/14/2008 4:41:03 PM PST by Mr_Moonlight
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To: SamAdams76
My wife and I belong to a small wine tasting group. None of us are sophisticated wine drinkers, but we have not found this to be the case. Often one of the low price wines is the highest rated wine. Many times a higher priced wine was disliked by almost all of us. Maybe we are just CHEAP?
6 posted on 01/14/2008 4:43:41 PM PST by jimbergin (GO FRED GO)
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To: RDTF

No kidding.


7 posted on 01/14/2008 4:45:14 PM PST by BenLurkin
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To: SamAdams76

You also better hope nobody at the table knows anything about wine. Because if I saw $44 on a bottle of Ravenswood Cabernet ($10) I’d laugh at your dumb a$$...


8 posted on 01/14/2008 4:52:38 PM PST by BreezyDog
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To: RDTF
HORSE SHIT. My wine comes out of a box and it achieves the same desired deliterious effect long before that overpriced 'sniff, sip, swallow, and breathe-through-your-mouth' Muscatel ever will. And let's see how good that test tube of frog squeezin's tastes washing down a slab of uber-sharp hunter's cheese sitting on a round of venison bologna. LMAO :-)


9 posted on 01/14/2008 4:54:51 PM PST by Viking2002 (Waterboarding the Left every chance I get.)
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To: RDTF
A recent song by The Who called "Old Red Wine" is a tribute of sorts to the late John Entwistle, who loved to collect (and drink) expensive bottles of 'vintage' red wine. As Pete Townshend tells it, the wine tasted like muck. /laughs

Some of the lyrics:
-------------------

Old red wine Well past its prime May have to finish it After crossing the line

Dusty old wine Two thousand a time An inch of black mud Always left behind

Old red wine Not worth a dime Gonna have to drink it with yer Some other time

Expensive old wine Forty years lying Mice chewed the labels Don't know what we're buying

------------------
Ahhh, to be a rich Rock Star with money to burn, ehhh? /laughs

10 posted on 01/14/2008 4:57:05 PM PST by Mr_Moonlight
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To: Mr_Moonlight
I try not to be a wine snob, but I must say that opening a bottle of ANY wine and expecting it to be drinkable a month later is ridiculous. (Port, sherry, madeira, and other sweet fortified wines are the only exceptions.)

Wine is destroyed by exposure to oxygen, and I have seldom tasted an opened bottle that was worth drinking even a week later.

-ccm

11 posted on 01/14/2008 5:10:29 PM PST by ccmay (Too much Law; not enough Order.)
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To: ccmay; Viking2002

but Viking will tell ya, the box wine solves all that :^)


12 posted on 01/14/2008 5:14:48 PM PST by RDTF
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To: jimbergin

Don’t know if you have a Trader’s Joe in your neck of the woods or not, but they sell a lot of good wines for under $10, from all over the world. Even their house brand that sells for under $3 is fairly drinkable (Charles Shaw, or Two Buck Chuck as it is popularly called). The only problem is often times I find a wine I really like a lot , but it always seems to disappear from the shelves forever shortly afterwards.


13 posted on 01/14/2008 5:54:17 PM PST by Welsh Rabbit
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To: bert
I switched from Boone’s Farm to more expensive Ripple and the euphoria of the breakthrough just carried me away.

Bert, Dude! You have no idea. Wait until you try Thunderbird!!!!!

14 posted on 01/14/2008 7:16:21 PM PST by Jeff Chandler (Hillary Clinton: Cankles, Cackle, and Cuckold.)
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To: ccmay
'Wine is destroyed by exposure to oxygen, and I have seldom tasted an opened bottle that was worth drinking even a week later.

Back home, we call it vinegar. :-)


15 posted on 01/14/2008 7:46:21 PM PST by Viking2002 (Waterboarding the Left every chance I get.)
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To: Welsh Rabbit

For your real bargains, try some of the dollar stores in CA.

Quite often they have remarkably good wine, presumably stuff that just didn’t sell well for some reason.


16 posted on 01/14/2008 9:02:50 PM PST by Sherman Logan
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To: RDTF; aculeus; Billthedrill; AnAmericanMother
Recommended reading, Roald Dahl’s Taste, the first story in Someone Like You.
17 posted on 01/14/2008 9:09:41 PM PST by dighton
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To: dighton

I remember that one.

X on top of the fridge, right?


18 posted on 01/15/2008 8:14:47 AM PST by aculeus
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To: aculeus

So’s not to spoil it for latecomers, he cheated.


19 posted on 01/15/2008 10:30:21 PM PST by dighton
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