"When you take a sip of Cabernet, what are you tasting? The grape? The tannins? The oak barrel? Or is it the price?
Believe it or not, the most dominant flavor may be the dollars.
Thanks to the work of some intrepid and wine-obsessed researchers (yes,
there is an American Association of Wine Economists), we have a new understanding of the relationship between wine, critics, and consumers.
One of these researchers is Robin Goldstein, whose paper detailing more than 6000 blind tastings reaches the conclusion that “individuals who are unaware of the price do not derive more enjoyment from more expensive wine.”
Why, then, do we pay so much attention to critics and connoisseurs
who tell us otherwise? That’s the question we set out to answer. You’ll
hear from
Steve Levitt, who admits his palate is
“underdeveloped,” about a wine stunt he pulled on his elders at
Harvard’s Society of Fellows; and wine broker Brian DiMarco pulled a stunt of his own on his wine-savvy employees.
Also in this hour, I witness an incident in a restaurant that would
doom any dining experience: a customer one table away was served a salad
with a dead mouse in it. How does a business respond in the face of
such a disaster?
Vincent Herbert, the CEO of the restaurant in question, Le Pain Quotidien, explains what happened and how he coped. Crisis-control expert
Andrew Gowers
gives us some insight from facing the public on behalf of Lehman
Brothers, post-collapse, and BP after the Deepwater Horizon oil spill."
The days and Wine and Mouses
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