What does it matter if, as Weber suggests, the story-free consumption of wine is a purer, even pleasanter experience than the more common kind of drinking? Most wine drinkers strike me as pretty happy with the way their wine tastes, however laden it may be with dubious narratives. It’s not as if deficient wine-drinking is a looming global crisis. But the implications of all this go beyond wine. We’re exploring the brain’s capacity to create illusions. This particular experiment studied the specific illusion that the intrinsic taste of a beverage depends on the story that has been affixed to
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