August 15th Pic!

"Testing"

The plan at the moment is to visit Argentina during Feb just in time for their Carnival and Beer festivals. Argentina is also known for their amazing Beef and Wine (Malbec). Eva is the wine expert between the two of us, which isn't saying much but she knows considerably more than I do. 

Since I'm blind when it comes to wine, I needed to know that Eva knew her stuff, so I conduced a blind taste test. I had a suspicion that when one orders wine, they simply look at the price and decide that it's good...i.e. Costly Price = Good Wine and visa versa. To read more on this topic check out "How Pleasure Works" by Paul Bloom. Based on the NPR segment about the book, it deals more with how brand identity makes people feel better...i.e. I'd rather pay for the real Iphone because Apple is cool vs a fake Iphone, but I think the concept applies to price vs perceived value also.

Anyway I ended up with a really really cheap (crappy?) wine in my fridge a few months back. Eva commented that it was a crappy label, and that it was cheap. So on the 15th I told her I'll go get some Wine and we'll do a blind taste test (notice in the Pic the label is covered with a Roadrunner coupon). Even I knew the wine was crap after the first sip, but I'm not the test subject. The wine was a Merlot from Turning Leaf, Eva doesn't really drink Merlot's but she took a few sips and did some swirling tests and color checks and decided the wine was crap. We dumped out the rest and opened up a better bottle of Zin, which I bought as a back-up so I won't get yelled at!

I feel a lot more comfortable going to Argentina now, but after this test I think even I know a little bit about Wine.