A provocatively titled post at Priceonomics called Is Wine Bullshit?.

That's a pretty good hook to draw you in, one reason being that there's already a little niggling feeling at the back of your head liking where this might be going.

A bit embarrassing.

There's much more like this, and it's hard not to feel a little schadenfreude as the author details them. But the article also touches upon how easily our taste senses can be fooled and how frail they can be. Easily fooled by simple expedients like a bit of colour added, rather like the red food colouring in the white wine.

I like a glass of wine but can't tell the various grapes apart, or know what region they're from. A lot of wine tastes fine to me but I can easily tell a bad one and I remember not to buy it again.

I've bought (so called) good wine, spending more than I normally would, and not been greatly impressed: I'm often more impressed with cheaper stuff. I've sometimes thought that this was due to my untrained palate and the need to cultivate it more. This is not something completely unheard of as I didn't use to like whisky until I "trained" myself a little. Maybe time for a bit more training!