Quality wine makes you happier (especially with high expectations and favorable conditions)

Drinking quality wine makes people feel happier, even those who are not wine experts: and the effect is amplified if there are high expectations and a favorable situation around, such as good music and a beautiful location. This is according to a scientific study, by researchers from the National Research Council, published in the “Journal of the Science of Food and Agriculture”.
Any action capable of creating expectations about product quality would be able to modulate experienced pleasantness. In this context, during the 2022 edition of the Pisa Internet Festival, the CNR promoted a “social experiment”, through an inexpensive and reliable methodology, based on wearable sensors to measure the emotions aroused in a live context by consumers of different types of wines. Five wines (two defective and three high quality) were offered to 50 unselected consumers in an exciting context, with live jazz music as background. Both explicit (questionnaires) and implicit (electrocardiogram) approaches recorded by wearable and smartphone sensors were used synergistically.
According to the results, wine undoubtedly generates a significant emotional response in consumers; the response is multifaceted and attributable to the quality level of the wine tasted. In fact, all things being equal, even less experienced consumers can perfectly recognize good wines compared to lower-quality products. In addition, high-quality wines are able to induce a spectrum of positive emotions, as observed by analysis of electrocardiogram signals, especially when paired with background music.
The scenario certainly played to the advantage of good quality wines, favoring their positive emotional characteristics on the palate, even of some less experienced consumers, thanks to a trickle-down effect of a positive mood generated by the surrounding conditions.