Wine is interesting because, while there is definitely some pretentious nonsense going on, the other extreme is hilarious as well. There are people out there insisting that it's impossible to differentiate red from white wine by blind taste test.

...except that there have been studies that show exactly that: https://www.realclearscience.com/blog/2014/08/the_most_infam...

Interesting, but one has to ask, were they testing the hypothesis or the participants? The participants were describes as both "students" and a "panel of experts".

"54 oenology (wine science) students". Them studying wine science is presumably what makes them experts.

except the study does not test for that. it somewhat interestingly shows that distinct vocabulary gets used for reds and whites once that context is established by a visual cue. that doesn't however mean no systematic difference between reds and whites can be detected.

I used to be a member of an amateur wine tasting group.. and someone figured we should serve some snacks while we were testing the wine. Turns out that with cheese most red wines taste almost the same, unless they've gone bad. Or at least you certainly won't find much difference between cheap and expensive wines.