> One doesn't need to be a wine enthusiast to tell a red wine from a white.
Ever tried? A study famously found that tasters don't notice the difference - when given a white wine with red food coloring, their evaluations were typical of evaluations of red wines.
Yeah - there's another study I recall reading about that measured people's reactions to smelling a given chemical, either from a bottle labeled "cheese" or a bottle labeled "vomit". IIRC they found that not only were people's reactions different, but different parts of their brain were used while forming the reactions.
I suspect that the truth is, humans simply aren't capable of filtering out our expectations in judgments like this. Seeing color is part of how we "taste" wine, the same way that looking at someone's lips is part of how we "hear" the difference between certain sounds.
Ever tried? A study famously found that tasters don't notice the difference - when given a white wine with red food coloring, their evaluations were typical of evaluations of red wines.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0093934X0...