Will you have wine with your chocs?

Hmm, I’m seeing a theme developing this week, a theme around food, studies, taste and tastes.

Hot on the trail of the Israeli study supporting the practice of eating cake for breakfast, and the University of Michigan study on how the last chocolate you eat tastes best, here’s a study on wine. Specifically on how consumers are inclined to rate the taste of a wine higher in inverse proportion to how unpronounceable its name is.

So—the more you struggle with the name in the wine list, the better you’re going to think it tastes. Also—you’ll be willing to pay more for it.

Especially if you’re a “wine geek”.

Those of us with less sophisticated palates are not neglected, though. “low knowledge consumers” tend towards wineries with cutesy names—Fat Bastard, Toad Hollow, Cupcake—because they connote comfort with a dash of difference. Wine from a toad’s abode? I’ll drink to that.