Adding the word ‘château’ (castle or noble country house, in French) on the label makes a bottle of wine appear fancier, according to a study.
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Superficial factors such as corks and heavy bottles also influenced the tasting preferences and overall quality perceptions of wine lovers.
A new study found that simply placing an image of a castle on the side of a wine bottle was enough for a plurality of consumers to assume it was the most expensive wine.
Supermarket Aldi partnered with Charles Spence – a food psychologist from the University of Oxford known for his unique research on food and beverages – to examine how people judge quality when selecting wine.
Asked to determine which wine was the most expensive just by looking at them, 34 percent of the respondents, the largest group, believed that a £10 ($73) bottle of wine with the image of a castle on the label was the most expensive, while only 15 percent correctly identified the most expensive bottle, a £95 ($700) selection labeled with simple black italic writing on a beige background, according to Wales Online.
Other peculiarities reported in judging the value of wine discovered during the research were that 25 percent of people believed a cork indicated a better wine than one with a screw cap, while respondents also said they would pay up to 40 percent more for a wine with a heavier bottle.
Finally, in a blind test, a supermarket wine priced at £6.49 ($48) allegedly beat a £36 ($265) bottle purchased from an independent wine shop.
“The results clearly show that you don’t always get what you pay for in terms of preference when tasting wines blind,” said Spence. “This is fully consistent with several previous studies that show little correlation between taste and price with wines. As the research indicates that buyers often use price as a quality factor, this classic buying behavior can often end up costing customers thousands of dollars over their lifetime.”
According to The Drinks Business, the study surveyed over 2,000 online consumers in the UK and recruited an additional 53 people for the blind taste test.
Source: Food & Wine
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