Robin Goldstein is the author of the ‘The Wine Trials’ guide, showcasing a hundred wines under $15, all available in the US, which outscored $50 to $150 wines in the rating scrutiny. The US critic conducted various blind-tastings in which more than 500 experts and everyday wine drinkers tasted a total of 6,000 labels with prices ranging from $1.50 to $150. The result: “an inverse correlation between price and preference of wines”, Goldstein states in the guide.
Several Spanish wines can be found among the glorious winners such as the reds ‘LAN’ and ‘Campo Viejo’ and the white ‘Marqués de Cáceres’, all three under QDO Rioja, ‘Freixenet Brut’ under DO Cava and the Vino de la Tierra de Castilla from Bodegas Osborne, ‘Solaz’.
With this book, Goldstein hopes to dispel what he calls wine’s “placebo effect”, which hold the premise that the more expensive the wine the better it is. In fact, some months ago a study carried out by Californian researchers clearly demonstrated the premise that the more expensive consumers believe a wine to be, the more likely they are to enjoy drinking it. The guide also springs from the author’s belief that “as everyday consumers, we don’t usually drink $150 wines”.
During the tastings all the wines where disguised in numbered brown-paper bags. At the end of the trials, both experts and wine-lovers from all age ranges, revealed the identity of the wines which had obtained the highest scores in their categories (between 1 for the worst and 4 for the best).
‘The Wine Trials’ devotes a whole page to each one of the hundred chosen wines and includes a photograph of the bottle, technical notes, tasting notes and a comment on the label design. “If people are so influenced by the bottle’s image; why shouldn’t we revise this aspect too?” states Goldstein, a graduate of Harvard University in Neuroscience and Philosophy, and the Yale Law School. He has a certificate in cooking from the French Culinary Institute in New York and a WSET (Wine & Spirit Education Trust) advanced wine and spirits certificate. He has written more than 30 Fodor’s travel guides, recommending countries such as Italy, Thailand, Argentina and Hong Kong.
