According to a survey carried out at the Edinburgh International Science Festival by Richard Wiseman, a psychologist at Hertfordshire University, found that expensive wine and cheap plonk taste the same to most people.
(The researchers categorised inexpensive wines as costing £5 and less, while expensive bottles were £10 and more. In the survey, 578 (lucky) people tasted a variety of red and white wines ranging from a £3.49 bottle of claret to a £29.99 bottle of champagne. The study found that people correctly distinguished between cheap and expensive white wines only 53% of the time, and only 47% of the time for red wines. The overall result suggests a 50:50 chance of identifying a wine as expensive or cheap based on taste alone – the same odds as flipping a coin.
So, an expensive wine may well have a full body, a delicate nose and good legs (wine buffs really do speak like this), but the odds are your brain will never know.)