Box Wines readers who found the study that showed “better” wine made food taste better, too (even though the wine served to all diners was identical!) might find this post at Neuromarketing interesting: Wine and the Spillover Effect. The post describes in more depth the marketing implications of wine labeling and presentation, and offers some suggestions for future research along the same lines.
The more interesting aspect of the research, though, is the demonstrated spillover effect. In each case, the presumed characteristics of the wine affected the perception of the food; despite both wine and food being identical, a wine thought to be inferior made the food taste worse and the customer less likely to return. This demonstrates the power of small variations in the customer experience to have unpredictable effects on satisfaction and sales.
It’s a fairly lengthy post that further highlights the importance of presentation of wine as part of a restaurant experience and how seemingly insignificant details can have a big impact on the diners’ perception of their overall dining experience.