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jpet comments on Open Thread: February 2010, part 2 - Less Wrong
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If "top winery" means "largest winery", as it does in this story, I don't see how it says anything about the ability of tasters to tell the difference. Those who made such claims probably weren't drinking Gallo in the first place.
I think it's closer to say they were passing off as cheap, something that's actually even cheaper.
Switch the food item and see if your criticism holds:
Wonderbread, America's top bread maker, was conned into selling inferior bread. So-called "gourmets" never noticed the difference! Bread tasting is a crock.
If people made such a huge deal about the nuances in the taste of bread, while it also "happened" to have psychoactive effects that, gosh, always have to be present for the bread to be "good enough" for them, and cheap breads were still normally several times the cost of comparable-nutrition food, then yes, the cases would be parallel.
(Before anyone says it: Yes, I know bread as trace quantities of alcohol, we're all proud of what you learned in chemistry.)
If people who can tell the difference are a big enough demographic to sell to, then they are employed by all wineries, regardless of quality. But an alternate explanation is that Gallo was tacitly in on the scam - they got as much PN as Sideways demanded, without moving the market.
Ah, I misunderstood the comment. I just assumed that Gallo was in on it, and the claim was that customers of Gallo failing to complain constituted evidence of wine tasting's crockitude.
If Gallo's wine experts really did get taken in, then yes, that's pretty strong evidence. And being the largest winery, I'm sure they have many experts checking their wines regularly--too many to realistically be "in" on such a scam.
So you've convinced me. Wine tasting is a crock.