Italiano
When you choose a wine, perhaps for a special occasion, do you rely on those little cockades on the bottle stating it won that or that other winetasting competition (one of the thousands)?
Probably yes… given that various marketing studies say that it is enough for the wine to have won an award to have its sales increase by 15%.
But let me tell you what happened a few months ago…
The crew of the Belgian satirical show “On n’est pas des pigeons” decides to do this experiment: can a cheap wine, with a bit of story-telling and a cool label, win a competition?
The choice falls on a piquette: a vinous beverage produced by adding water to grape pomace.
So, yes: manufacturing waste, basically. Cost on supermarket shelves: €2.70.
This “piquette”, which technically isn’t even a wine, was masked by a label bearing the logo of a non-existent winery with a posh name: Chateau Colombier.
On the side, a little story (obviously invented): wine produced from native grapes from certain specific areas of Wallonia etc etc…
Wine shipped to Macon (France), home of the “Gilbert & Gaillard International Wine Competition” and… first prize!
The jury, we read in the motivations, was impressed by the “Chateau Colombier“, defined as “silky, fresh, and with a rich and pleasant palate, exhibiting fruity, frank, and pleasantly complex aromas“.
C’mon, it was a good prank. Perhaps not for the organizers.
Although, nothing new, actually.
This prank was an experiment performed by a team of neuroecomists at Caltech years ago.
Simply put: our prefrontal cortex expects an expensive wine to be a good wine. Here the “rational” side of our brain thus distorts reality, as in a sort of placebo effect, making us notice the “quality” in a product that we would otherwise have snubbed.
A bias that even the most trained palates struggle to overcome.
However… I trust sommeliers. I consider them, more often than not, to be expert professionals in their field. It is our brain that we should trust less!
And trust me… if you work in #cateringindustry and/or #hospitalityindustry and you are interested in my #copywriting and/or #contentwriting services, just DM me!
