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Comment by icelancer | Hacker News Reader

>> experienced, respected tasters can't tell a red from a white

This is ridiculous. There is no way this is true. I'm an idiot and I can tell the difference blindly between a red and a white.

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IIRC the experiment tricked them by colouring the whites red and vice versa. So even if you could tell the difference you might not be so confident that you would know a trick was being played on you.

If that's what the experiment was, then it seems less evidence of people being able to taste the difference, and more evidence of how our visual perception might be able to mess with our sense of taste.

This is in fact a well-known effect.

Give people green lollipops and a substantial percentage will describe the flavor as "lime", even if it's actually cherry.

Give people red lollipops and a substantial percentage will describe the flavor as "cherry", even if it's actually lime.

But that doesn't mean that lime and cherry actually taste the same.

The other way this is done is by using a black glass: https://www.wineware.co.uk/iso-type-black-wine-tasting-glass...

I've done (literally) blind taste testing. I could do it, because I knew what was being testing, but it was trickier than I anticipated. One member of my group got a couple guesses wrong. It's not such a ridiculous thing that even an expert (whose expectations have been betrayed by red food coloring in a white wine) might stumble.

when they're the same temperature?

It really depends on the wine as said earlier. I know pretty much nothing about wine and I could tell you the difference between a couple white wines because some are noticeably sweet (moscato, riesling) compared to others (sauvignon blanc, pinot grigio). I could id the first category vs the second, while somebody into wine presumably would have more depth.

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