Inspired by Osteria L'Intrepido

So, one of my delights of the modern age is the Podcast. I should do one for the Gentleman Audiophile, although I doubt I’ll achieve the degree of professionalism and insight of my current second favourite, the Freakonomics Radio podcast (my favourite is the justifiably popular Friday Night Comedy on Radio 4, which is not technically a Podcast rather a downloadable recording of the show broadcast conventionally on a Friday night in the UK).  

Freakonomics is a book by a couple of economists which has enjoyed bestseller status for a few years and a staple of many an airport departure lounge  bookstore. I’ve enjoyed reading it. It describes a number of elements of modern society in terms of what the data tells us, what the underlying mechanisms are to shopping and politics and risk taking, some of which is unexpected and some of which is a little bit “so what? I knew that!” but applied in an unfamiliar context. I have a maths degree and work in the City, so this stuff appeals to me.

 There are a variety of podcasts presented with wry humour and a nice flow, interrupted only by the inevitable advertising which is usually discreet enough to be ignored. So, to my point: the podcast entitled “Do more expensive wines taste better?”  

In short, the answer is “maybe”…. but, crucially, even the most educated, the most decorated and the most respected palates in the world can be fooled into believing that an inexpensive wine is worthy of the best accolades, if the wine reviewer is led to believe the wine under blind test is expensive. It is expectation bias pure and simple, about which I have written in other posts.

So, in the main elements of the podcast, our pet economist describes a number of experiments in which a mix of expensive and inexpensive wines are presented, either in anonymous carafe or in paper-wrapped bottles, with the crucial addition that the drinkers are told what wines they will be drinking  - in terms of ‘one expensive, three cheap’ or some equivalent mix – and the experienced and expert drinkers clearly prefer the wine they believe is more expensive, even rating the same wine differently under blind conditions on believing one of the identical samples is more expensive than the other.

Whilst the occasional reviewer asks “Is this the same wine?” on being told ‘write what you think you’re tasting’ just go ahead and rate them differently anyway.   Wine and hifi have a lot in common. As we all know, expectation bias tells us the new cable on which we splurged much Sterling must be good, the DAC whose output is 384KHz instead of a puny 44.1KHz with no oversampling has to offer a smoother and more expansive and musical sound, and so on and so forth. They may be different, but are they *better* and are they better because they are expensive?  

The most telling conclusion of all being that the packaging, the label and shape and lustre of the bottle or the presentation of the wine in its’ brilliant crystal decanter, matters more to people’s perception of quality, and by inference enjoyment, than the actual cost of the wine itself.   No wonder so many manufacturers use blue LEDs and Perspex chimneys to adorn their equipment – it works! At least, it makes for happy customers even if it doesn’t actually make the equipment sound any better. And having happy customers who enjoy their systems because the feet light up blue is as valid as having drinkers enjoy their oaked, new world Chardonnay at £15 a pop – it may be a moose in a mink coat, but a happy customer is a happy customer regardless.   If that makes sense…  

I suggest now as I have before that the Gentleman Audiophile must resist the temptation to attribute expectation bias to true progress. It is, after all, a definitive part of the audiophile’s art to perfect the reproduction of the musical event, just as a future Master of Wine should seek to improve their ability to differentiate a Bordeaux from a Beaujolais. My insight here is to state that, despite the clear evidence that anyone can be fooled and most of the general public clearly are, we as Gentlemen Audiophiles wouldn’t deny them the satisfaction of their own systems regardless of component cost just as we can sip a light Frascati and enjoy the swing of a dinner party in Essex. It might be technically inferior, but we’re having fun, right? If it touches your heart, it’s music and it’s what makes hifi as interesting as wine consumption. Blessed indeed are those whose heart is touched without resorting to megabucks systems and a position pinioned with millimetre accuracy in their listening chair.  

Blessed are the Cheesemakers! Or indeed anyone involved in the production of dairy products (<-- if you get this reference you get a gold star)  

There is more. Whither “Osteria L’Intrepido”.....?  

The story, as described in the podcast and also available on Wikipedia and in other internet sources, is fairly simple; a wine economist, suspecting that a prestigious US Wine magazine wasn’t in fact rating wines and restaurant wine lists based on how good they were, but rather on how much the wineries and restaurants were prepared to pay directly or in advertising for their awards, set up a dummy restaurant - “Osteria L’Intrepido” – in Milan.

Technically, it was an answer phone machine in a friend’s apartment in Milan which, when rung, spoke a message in Italian stating ‘the restaurant is closed for summer holidays, please leave a message’. A dummy website was set up with a dummy wine list, containing a number of wines the US wine magazine themselves had rated as fair to awful, and real postal order for the entry fee to be ‘considered for review’ by the magazines reviewers sent to sample the restaurant. And our economist friends sat back and waited.  

A few weeks later and the phone call came through from the prestigious US wine mag – yes, you’ve been chosen for our Italian section as a recommendation for a great restaurant with a fantastic wine list, and would you like to promote your restaurant through more advertising in our magazine? Clearly, not only had nobody from the magazine bothered to attempt to review the restaurant in person themselves (noting that, after publishing the sting in the global press and harming the US wine magazine’s reputation,  they pointed out that they only have time to spot check a few restaurants a year and the majority of their recommendations are based on a remote review of the website to see if the menu and the wine list look good), but they hadn’t even checked the wine list for the howlers secreted within they themselves had previously rated as awful.  

When I heard this story I immediately thought of the hifi press. Here is another review or recommendation industry, driven by advertising revenue and almost entirely subjective, upon which many thousands of readers depend for information and guidance. Of necessity subjective, because as we now know there is no accurate measure of performance other than our ears; RMS watts, for example, mean nothing to me or else I’d be distraught that my expensive Tron power amp only manages 8 and I could have bought several kilowatt amps for similar money.  

I’m fed up reading these magazines. They are littered with examples of bias so blatant it’s one step away from complete falsehood and a libel suit. They do offer plenty of background reading, information the GA can absorb and understand and cogitate upon, but honestly the number of times I’ve read about something amazing, which just happens to carry full page advertising, and which I’ve subsequently heard and, at best, to which I’ve attributed the label ‘bland’. If the Gentleman will read these magazines, or spend time trawling internet forums (as I’ve done myself) for recommendations then please do so with a firm focus on making sure your excitement at some potential product improvement is tempered with a realisation of who is trying to sell you something and how they’re doing it. Hifi magazines need to sell magazines, and equipment manufacturers need to sell equipment. Reviewers need to write something and eat and drink (cheap Chardonnay, most likely). At least a local, knowledgeable dealer is obviously trying to sell kit, not selling stuff surreptitiously and underhandedly.

I like 6moons. At least here the reviewer’s interests are published for all to see, and you can (if you had the wherewithal) check some of these and complain if they weren’t accurate and missed some element of bias. Srajan is opinionated, but backs it up with being consistent in his opinions, which means they’re cogent and believable as his own, probably not revenue generating whether or not you agree. And the rich, picture-driven format helps you see just how equipment is made and whether or not it looks like a pigs ear turned into a silk purse; most good equipment is well made, and most of the dodgy stuff reviewed elsewhere does not, for some reason, make it onto 6moons to be opened, inspected and photographed.  

At the end of the day…. being a Gentleman Audiophile, I’m seeking pleasure in stuff that works, wine that is either complex and exciting, or inexpensive and fun, with a view that everything can deliver pleasure to everyone regardless of cost or kudos. Polite discrimination of the hyped product from the truly pleasurable is key.  

Next step: determine the effect of drinking wine on the pleasure of listening to music. I have a hypothesis that the first glass and every subsequent glass up until the fourth or fifth (small) glass result in a small improvement in system quality, and system quality decreases thereafter with every glass until you can’t hear any more because you are asleep. This hypothesis needs proving!