Proof: The Science of Booze

by Adam Rogers

Now, to be fair, Quandt doesn’t really think anyone, no matter how expert, can produce an objective assessment of a wine’s quality, origins, manufacture, or taste. Because that’s what his data tells him. “We are eight guys who are pretty experienced and have been doing this together for twenty years, and yet when we do the statistical analysis of our tastings, the amount of disagreement is extraordinary,” Quandt says. “Since people don’t have identical utility functions, they evaluate different characteristics of the wine. As a result, a wine that tastes fantastic to one person will taste shitty to another one. In a sense, it’s hopeless.” You might even think that over time the members of the Liquid Assets group would have learned from each other and learned more about wine. If that was true, their amount of intra-group agreement would have increased, even if they didn’t agree with outsiders. But no dice. The numbers show they disagree with each other today as much as they did twenty years ago. In fact, they pride themselves on it. The difference between Quandt’s group and professional wine reviewers, then, is that the pros attempt to disguise their subjectivity with—well, put it this way: Quandt’s paper on the subject for the Journal of Wine Economics is called “On Wine Bullshit”: Since there are many wine writers, and there is a substantial overlap in the wines they write about (particularly Bordeaux wines), it is important that there be substantial agreement among the...