When it comes to wine, stingy college students might just be right going the Franzia route. As it turns out, the average college student’s love affair with cheap wine can actually be backed by science.
As a recent slate article points out, “piles of studies” have shown that taste-testers cannot distinguish cheap wine from expensive wine. According to a paper from the American Association of Wine Economists (yes, this is apparently a real organization), individuals do not enjoy expensive wine more in blind taste-tests. In fact, the average person enjoys expensive wines slightly less.
If it’s not how much a wine costs, then what does determine how much people enjoy their wine? A paper published by The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Of the United States of America, or PNAS, provides a possible answer to this question. (yes, the official journal of the National Academy of Sciences decided that wine tasting was worth studying). According to the PNAS paper, people report better flavors in wine when they think it costs more.
When it comes to judging wine quality, the psychological effect of how we perceive the wine hugely impacts how much we enjoy it. If we can trick ourselves into think that we are drinking good wine, the wine will actually taste better. Unless you’re an expert wine connoisseur, believing that cheap wine tastes good is a self-fulfilling prophesy.
So to all of the college students out there who pale at the thought of actually spending large sums of money for alcohol: fear not and drink up your cheap wine. (But only if you’re 21, of course).
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