 We're gonna see whether people can tell the difference between a red wine and a white wine and we're gonna see whether they can tell the difference between a young wine, say a 2012 and an older wine, about four years older, a 2008 and specifically whether people can tell the particular grape that the wine is. So we have a bunch of different kinds. We have a Chardonnay, we have a Riesling, a Pinot Noir and a Merlot. And so what we're gonna do is have people taste each of these wines and see whether they can tell the difference, whether they can actually tell what it is that they're drinking. But it's going to be completely blind and so people are gonna be wearing these blindfolds, these little eye masks and so they won't actually be able to see what they're drinking. A few components of the scientific method that we have to that we have to look at. So for example, if I just gave you one glass and poured one of these wines into it and blindfolded you and then asked you what it was, you might get it right, you might get it wrong, right? So you have a 50-50 chance of being correct at, for example, at telling what color it is. If I was just guessing. If you're just guessing, exactly. Or we wouldn't be able to tell if you were guessing or whether you actually could do it or not because you only had the one. But if we do it eight times, right, with some white, some red, and you get them all right, then that happening by chance, so guessing each of those just by chance is going to be pretty impressive, right? So it would be very unlikely that you get all eight right if you were just guessing alone. And so the best way to do this is to have more of these. And not just that, if we're also going to be testing whether people generally can tell the difference between, say, a red and white wine, then we want more than one person, right? So we want people who may be some people who have a bit of experience with wine, some people who don't have experience, complete novices. So that's what we're dealing with. So we tried to get, people are about to come over any minute now, but we have some people who know very little about wine, I know that for certain, and some people who know a fair bit, and I know that for certain. But in order to test whether they have wine knowledge or not, we have this paper by Bob Bokes and Angus Houston from 2001. So Bob, he's actually at the University of Sydney, wrote this paper and they came up with a pretty interesting little wine knowledge test. So it asks things like, what is the main grape variety used in Grange? So it's kind of Australian, which is fine because we're in Australia. And so we're going to have each of our guests take this test and see how well they do, and see if they're more like a high knowledge group or more of a low knowledge group. And we have about a dozen people, about 10 people I suppose coming over. And so we'll hopefully have half the people who are high knowledge and half the people that are low knowledge after they take this test. But then another problem that we have with this sort of wine tasting is that, well what if we give them all of the Chardonnays first, followed by all the Pinot Noirs for example? Well then there's something called an order effect, right? So if there might be something about that order of things that people pick up on and they get it right more often than they would if we kind of mix them up. And so what we need to do is to scramble the order that they receive these wines. And so beforehand, I drew a bunch of, essentially I drew a bunch of names out of a hat or a bunch of wines out of a hat. And we have the first guest, Brydie, is going to get this particular order. So wine F-E-A-B-H and so on, where we have each of the wines that are located here listed A to H, which is random. So I just randomly assign these to those particular wines. The way that it's going to work is we have a person come in, they sit down, they're going to sit here, and we're going to pour them a glass of wine, they're going to take a sip, and they're going to guess whether the glass of wine is a red or a white wine, and then whether it's a Chardonnay, Merlot, Pinot Noir, or a Riesling. Those are the four different kinds that we have here. And if they guess at random, then they'd be about 25% correct, whether it's more like a 2008 or a 2012, and whether they think it costs more like a $20 bottle or $50 bottle. That's the importance of kind of the scientific method, and that's why we're doing this. And hopefully we'll see a difference between kind of the capabilities of people and whether people can actually tell the difference between, say, a cheap wine and an expensive wine, or a red wine and a white wine, or a Riesling and a Pinot Noir. So what does this tasting tell us about how people drink wine in everyday life? Well, the only thing that we can do, really, in order to find out, for example, whether people can tell the difference between white and red, is to control it very tightly. I mean, if we were just to go out and test people in a pub, or see them and then close their eyes and then give it to them in a very sort of uncontrolled situation like that, then we really can't conclude much. I mean, we really can't tell as much as we can under these very tightly controlled conditions. We're dealing with wines here that are around the $20 mark to a $50 mark. I mean, we're not dealing with a $500, but we could go quite extreme. But I think the wines that we have here are from our local bottle shop. They're the kind of wines that you and I would drink, or most of our friends at least. So I think I'm pretty comfortable with the way that this, what this might tell us. And I think the results from this I could use in my everyday life to be able to figure out, for example, whether I should splurge and buy the $50 bottle, or maybe just settle for the $20. I think it's a very understudied field, despite the fact that everybody does it. People rely on sommelier ratings when buying wine. We rely on medallions on wines and so on. But we really don't know an awful lot about how well we can do this. One important aspect of this experiment is something called blinding. And so if you are a participant, if you're one of the people that show up for the party, and you try a wine, and you don't know what it is, that means it's a single blind experiment. So if I just put one of the masks on you and you sit there and try each one, then you're blind to what it is that you're tasting, right? That makes sense. And most of the experiments, that's kind of what you would want to do. We're going to take it one step further. And we're going to do something called double blinding. Now that means that the person who's pouring the wine and who's serving it to the participant is also blind. So they don't know what it is that they're pouring. OK, so what we're going to do is, in order to do that, is to wrap each of the bottles in aluminum foil and then in a plastic bag, and then we're going to label them. The reason that we want to blind the experimenter, or the person who's actually pouring each of the wines, is because they might be able to cue the participant. They might be able to inadvertently give them clues about what it is that they're drinking. Now that might be something like putting the white glasses a little bit closer to them, or it might be any number of things. I mean this is kind of what they do in medicine all the time. When you give a person a pill, the doctor doesn't know whether the pill is a placebo or the actual medicine that they're given. Neither does the patient. And we're doing the same sort of thing here. The person who's tasting the wine doesn't know whether it's a chardonnay or a riesling. And neither does the person who's serving it. So how did people do in the wine tasting? They did pretty well in some respects and not so well in others. Now you remember we had several tasks that each person had to do. So they had the glass of wine, they could smell it, they could taste it, and then they made different judgments. And so the first judgment that they made was whether the wine was red or whether it was white. Now we had 10 people participate in total. And we found that in judging whether the wines were red or white, people on average across the 10 were 89% correct. That's pretty good. At judging red or white. And remember if they were guessing completely, they'd be at 50%. There's two options, one out of two is 50. But they were 89% correct, which is pretty great I think. Now the second task, we asked them after judging the color of the wine, was it a riesling, a chardonnay, a pinot noir, or a merlot? So they had a choice of four grapes. And they were 50% correct at this one. Now remember there are four choices, so chance guessing randomly is 25% correct. So they were not bad. I don't know what really. Me neither. So they could do it reasonably well, better than, I would say, a little better than chance, but you'd be the judge. They were 50% correct. Guessing randomly is 25% correct. Their next task was to judge whether it was young or whether it was old. So whether it was more like a 2008 or more like a 2012. Cuz those were the averages, each of the wines that they tasted were four years apart. Now could they tell that they were four years apart? No. In judging whether they were young or old, they were 61% correct. And again, chance guessing randomly is 50% correct. So they were not much better than chance, really. And finally, their job was to judge whether it was a inexpensive or expensive, more like a $20 bottle of wine or more like a $50 bottle of wine. And they were only 56% correct at this one. Chance is 50. So in judging whether it's a cheap wine or a more expensive wine, a $20 bottle versus a $50 bottle, you'd expect them to be at 50% correct. If they were guessing totally, they were at 56%. So they weren't much better. Great, yeah. Now we also had each person complete a quiz beforehand. And people on average didn't do so well on the wine knowledge quiz, but we did have three people out of the ten who would be classified as high knowledge, as more of an expert taster. Now the only place that it seemed to matter whatsoever was judging the price point. So I said that on average across all ten people, people were 56% correct at identifying the price. Well, if we look at our high knowledge people specifically, they were 67% correct at identifying the price. So a little better. Again, chance is 50%. So they were a little bit more, not great, but okay. And the low knowledge people were only 52% correct. Again, chance is 50. So yeah, the low knowledge people had, yeah, no hope. So in general, I should mention we also had one bottle of really nice expensive wine, I think it was a 2006 Pinot Noir. It was $100 bottle. Now $100 bottle, and we asked people again whether it was more like a $20, more like a 50, this is more like a $100 bottle. But only six people out of the ten were able to identify it as the more expensive option. Four people said that it was more like a $20 bottle than a 50. I'm sure most of you never tasted a $100 bottle of that sort of caliber. You think it would really stand out, but obviously- That's right. I don't, well, only two out of three of the high knowledge people got that one right, in particular, actually. So, yeah, I mean, I'm not sure really where that leaves us. But overall, people can identify the color of the wine, red versus white, reasonably well, quite well actually. The grape, not bad, and the year and the price, they were pretty much hopeless at. So, again, the reason that we went through this process was to give people an indication of what the experimental process of design of an experiment looks like. And it's really, I mean, this is way over the top as far as what most people could do, but as far as designing experiments and methodology more than they probably want to do. But at least it gives them an indication of how they might kind of structure these things if they were curious about asking these sorts of questions.