Chemists Build App That Could Identify Cheap Replacements For Luxury Wines

schliz writes "Australian startup Wine Cue is combining the chemical composition of wines with customer ratings for what it hopes to be a more objective wine recommendation engine than existing systems that are based on historical transactions. The technology is likely to reach the market as a smartphone app, and could be used to identify cheap alternatives to expensive bottles."

Comments

Re:More objective would be welcome

[Mr. Freeman]

You're also probably not as good at picking out anything as you think you are. If you've never done any kind of double-blind testing to find out then your assumptions are likely nothing more than conformation bias. Same thing with "experienced sommeliers"

Example: You drink a wine and say that you taste X. The next person at the table hears this and therefore tastes X. It also probably works in reverse. That's not to say that you couldn't tell the difference between two wines that are drastically different, but subtle differences are likely imperceptible.