Bear with me. There is a link between drinkers who swallow the fancy nonsense on wine labels and young voters’ naivety

Fed up with politicians? Two star writers offer some joyous (liquid) refreshment ...

WHAT an absurd lot we homo sapiens are. As a species, we like to think ourselves superior to smaller-brained inhabitants of the planet, such as swarming bees, herds of buffalo or sheep that mindlessly follow the flock. But I often think we’re just as easily led — and in some respects, perhaps even more so.

Indeed, though I’m no David Attenborough, I’d suggest we are the only creatures on this Earth whose very senses — the way we see, taste, smell, hear and feel — are profoundly influenced by the guidance of others.

The point was brought home vividly this week in a fascinating study by the University of Adelaide in Australia, which found that wine actually tastes better to the human palate if the drinker has first heard it described in flowery language by someone else. This seems to apply no matter how meaningless the description may be.

You know the sort of thing: ‘An intensely accessible vintage, at the peak of its perfection, with a distinguished oaky nose, undertones of burnt toast and freshly mown hay and a distinct raspberry-andbutterscotch finish.’

As explained in Food Research International, the scientists gave regular drinkers three popular Australian white wines to test, asking them to rate them blind, with no information supplied.

Delicate

A week later, they were given the same three wines — only this time they were told they were tasting six new ones. Three of the bottles were labelled with basic descriptions, the other three in the purple prose favoured by so many wine critics.

For example, a Riesling was first described simply as ‘pale yellow/green’. But when the same wine was offered again, the drinkers were told it had ‘refreshing lemon and lime fruits accompanied by delicate jasmine flower aromas’.

Furthermore, they were informed, it came from a family vineyard with 145 years’ experience and was ‘lovingly crafted, with a respectful nod to our forebears, using handpicked fruit from our highest altitude vineyards’.

Sure enough, the 126 human guinea-pigs enjoyed the wine more after hearing the elaborate description, giving it higher marks than before. On average they were found to be roughly 33 per cent more likely to buy it. What mugs, eh?

But then professional wine-tasters are also heavily influenced by factors other than taste. According to separate studies, they consistently give the same wine different ratings when presented with it twice, almost always preferring it when they are told it is more expensive. All of which has set me wondering about my own moment of revelation, when I understood for the first time what oenophiles were on about when they went into raptures over a fine wine. Or thought I did.

As I’ve described before, it came in France on my 19th birthday, when the patron of the hotel where I was working in my gap year presented me with a bottle of Chateau Latour, vintage 1953 — my birth year. My first sip told me that this was the most exquisite liquid ever to have slipped down my throat, or ever likely to again.

But with this week’s research in mind, I wonder if it was really the smell and taste of it that transported me to sensual heaven? Or could it be that my pleasure had as much to do with the words printed on the label — ‘Premier Grand Cru Classe’ — and the fact that I happened to know Chateau Latour was fabulously expensive and rated by some claret buffs as the best wine in the world?

I don’t know what it cost then. But I saw it advertised on the internet yesterday (‘from the excellent 1953 vintage, this amazing red wine has a forthcoming bouquet, a sweet round entry and is a deep intense wine’) with a price-tag of a cool £349.97. And that was for a half-bottle!

Does it cost that much because it’s so delicious? Or is it so delicious because it costs that much? If the scientists’ findings are to be believed, the answer is probably a bit of both.

And what goes for wine must surely go for food, too. Speaking for myself, I’ve always been irritated by those flowery descriptions of dishes on the menu at fancy restaurants. Again, we all know the genre.

At the sort of establishment I have in mind, we won’t be offered bangers and mash with onion gravy. No, exactly the same dish, cooked with precisely the same ingredients, will be described thus: ‘Mouth-watering torpedoes of prime Lincolnshire pork, pan-fried and garnished with a puree of dawn-gathered maris pipers, drizzled with an aromatic salsa de cebolla.’ What’s more, the asking price will be nearer £20 than the £6.50 at the local caff.

The question is this: does the fancy description, coupled with the inflated price tag, actually make the dish more pleasing to the palate? Over to you, Adelaide University. Then, when you’ve finished your investigation of taste, you might turn your attention to how far the pleasures we derive from our other senses are influenced by what we read and hear.

Take eyesight and our sense of beauty. For many years now, my own favourite painting has been Girl At A Window, which hangs in our local Dulwich Picture Gallery in South London. But I’ve often asked myself if it would give me so much sensual pleasure if I hadn’t read thousands of words praising it, and didn’t know it was by a certain artist called Rembrandt.

Call me a philistine, but if the same painting had been attributed to ‘Anon’, the chances are that I would have studied it for a moment or two, found it quite pleasing and thought no more about it.

As it is, I’ve been back to see it time and time again, enjoying it more at every visit. Others, too, seem to spend more time looking at it than at any other picture in the gallery.

Genius

But how much is this due to the intrinsic beauty of the painting? Doesn’t it also have a lot to do with the human herd instinct, the fame of the artist, the knowledge that everything he painted is worth a bomb and the reputation of Girl At A Window as the artwork that’s been stolen more often than any other in the country? Whatever the truth, the next time it disappears I’ll be the number-one suspect.

It’s the same with our other senses, too. How many of us, relying on our hearing alone, would revel in the genius of Shakespeare or Mozart if we didn’t know that millions of others rate them as sublime?

How many of my generation would have laughed themselves stupid at Monty Python’s Flying Circus, as I did in the early Seventies, if it hadn’t been for the fact that almost everyone of our age was laughing at it, too? I watch repeats now and wonder what on earth I found so funny at the time.

All of which brings me to the question weighing most heavily on my mind. As I write, the polling stations are still open and I haven’t an inkling of the election result. What worries me most is how many young people will have voted for Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party, driven out of their senses by the mindless herd instinct of social media?

With a sleepless night ahead, I’ll be opening a bottle or two to dull the anxiety. Plonk will do me — and I don’t care a damn how it’s described on the label.