Graham King:
In large-scale blind taste tests, average consumers and wine experts consistently preferred Washington's $12 Domaine Ste Michelle sparkling wine to the $150 Dom Perignon. In general, the authors find a slight _negative_ correlation between price and blind-taste rating. That more expensive wines are 'better' in any scientifically measurable way, is a myth.
The Wine Trials is a wine buying guide, a review of the scientific research on wine perception and preference, and a blind-tasting manifesto.
The buyers guide lists the 175 wines under $15 which were most popular in large scale blind-taste tests (500 people), outscoring $50-$150 wines. All the wines should be readily available in the USA.
The research review and manifesto are the wine-world's equivalent of the kid running down the street screaming "The Emperor's not wearing any clothes!". We learn that wine experts give widely different scores to the same wine on repeat tastings, and when secretly served the same wine twice in a tasting are unable to identify the duplicate.
So how do elite wine tasters judge a wine? Price. It turns out there's a huge price-bias in professional wine ratings: "to my knowledge, no scientific blind-tasting study of wine experts has ever shown expensive wines to do as consistently well, or cheap wines to do as consistently poorly, as they do in Wine Spectator".
Fun, informative, and myth-busting. A great book to enjoy, with wine of course.
