The article “Analysis of Reserve and Regular Bottlings: Why Pay for a Difference Only the Critics Claim to Notice?”

(Chance, Summer 2005, pp. 9–15) reported on an experiment to investigate whether wine tasters could distinguish between more expensive reserve wines and their regular counterparts.

Wine was presented to tasters in four containers labeled A, B, C, and D, with two of these containing the reserve wine and the other two the regular wine. Each taster randomly selected three of the containers, tasted the selected wines, and indicated which of the three he/she believed was different from the other two. Of the tasting trials, 346 resulted in correct distinctions (either the one reserve that differed from the two regular wines or the one regular wine that differed from the two reserves). Does this provide compelling evidence for concluding that tasters of this type have some ability to distinguish between reserve and regular wines? State and test the relevant hypotheses using the P-value approach.

Are you particularly impressed with the ability of tasters to distinguish between the two types of wine?