Do More Expensive Wines Taste Better?

I just saw this on Levitt's blog and will link to it here. I've not read the paper yet, but this is a reminder to do so.

Abstract. Individuals who are unaware of the price do not derive more enjoyment from more expensive wine. In a sample of more than 6,000 blind tastings, we find that the correlation between price and overall rating is small and negative, suggesting that individuals on average enjoy more expensive wines slightly less. For individuals with wine training, however, we find indications of a positive relationship between price and enjoyment. Our results are robust to the inclusion of individual fixed effects, and are not driven by outliers: when omitting the top and bottom deciles of the price distribution, our qualitative results are strengthened, and the statistical significance is improved further. Our results indicate that both the prices of wines and wine recommendations by experts may be poor guides for non-expert wine consumers.

Just from reading the abstract, the fact that there is a correlation between price and enjoyment for experts seems to suggest that wine enjoyment has a human capital component. That is, appreciation is learned. Becker and Stigler wrote about this in their classic paper, "De Gustibus Non Est Disputandum" when talking about listening to classical music. Music appreciation depends not just on current consumption, but on past consumption, and it's the past consumption that raises the marginal benefit in fact of the current consumption. For wine, I expect this is the same thing - to enjoy higher priced wine, you have to spend time drinking many wines. You have to accumulate a capital stock, known as the discerning palette, and that only will enable you to discern the subtle differences in higher quality wines.

Update: The more I scan over this paper, and then re-read Levitt's post, the less I'm impressed with the paper or Levitt's interpretation of it. It sounds to me like the paper is simply saying that wine appreciation is something learned over time, and involves repeated consumption. It sounds like, in other words, like I just said - wine appreciation is a function of previous wine consumption. That's why the expert notices the differences but the typical drinker does not. It's like doing a blind study with non-trained musicians and trained musicians and having them listening to different kinds of music and asking them to rate what they prefer better. If we find the trained musicians consistently are able to tell the differences between some kind of music but non-trained musicians are not, do we conclude that it's a waste of time to try to become skilled in music appreciation? Levitt's normative conclusion to his blog sounds like he's saying that though. He writes:

What lesson should we take from this? No matter what, do not let yourself become a wine expert who can tell the difference between cheap and expensive wines. When it comes to your pocketbook and wine, ignorance is bliss.

What? If anything, I came to the opposite conclusion. Maybe once I read the paper more carefully, I'll see it differently, but it sounded to me like there was value to developing these skills. Had not even wine experts been able to blindly discern differences in the wine, then I'd think it was a sham, but unless I'm missing something, it sounds like the real differences are only detected by certain people.