Wine Connoisseurs & Audiophiles

I just started a book on unusual science experiments, called "Elephants on Acid and Other Bizarre Experiments."  One of the more benign ones mentioned is a wine tasting where red dye was added to white wine.  Not a single one of the Connoisseurs picked it out as a doctored white wine.

The terms used to describe wine are notoriously vague and subjective.

In fact, wine tasting strikes me as very similar to the fuzzy, subjective, make-believe world of audiophile audio.  Both feature "experts" who claim to be able to detect differences that us normal folk can't.  Both have developed opaque and frequently contradictory vocabularies to describe what their senses tell them.  Both involve a lot of ego because a lot of money is involved and the opinions of these experts is considered reason enough to spend large sums of money.

And both are widely ridiculed by the general public who suspect it's all made up.

There are good wines and bad wines, and if you let me sample them I can taste the difference. And I'm sure there are plenty of people who have finer palates than mine. But I'm also sure that many of the people who claim to be connoisseurs are not really any better at it than me.

The book I read about rare wine fakes -- "The Billionaire's Vinegar" -- said rare wine tastings routinely included a few grocery store fakes, and nobody ever picked them out.