One of the things I enjoy most about teaching wine is watching a student’s face when a long-held belief turns out to be wrong.

Not “slightly inaccurate.”

Not “open to interpretation.”

Simply wrong.

Wine, for all its beauty and complexity, has accumulated a remarkable collection of myths over the centuries. Some originated as well-intentioned advice. Others began as marketing slogans. A few seem to survive simply because they’ve been repeated so often that people assume they must be true.

After several decades of teaching wine appreciation classes, I’ve come to a simple conclusion: Wine lovers are remarkably intelligent people.

They’re also remarkably susceptible to believing things that simply aren’t true.

So, in the spirit of challenging conventional wisdom, let’s examine a few of the wine world’s most durable misconceptions.

Myth #1: Expensive Wine Is Always Better Wine

Let’s start with perhaps the most persistent myth of all.

Many people assume that price and quality are directly related. The more expensive the wine, the better it must be.

If only life were that simple.

Certainly, there are legitimate reasons why some wines command extraordinary prices. Scarcity, vineyard location, labor intensity, producer reputation, and aging potential can all influence cost.

However, after decades of tasting wine, I can confidently say that price and enjoyment are not the same thing.

I’ve enjoyed modestly priced wines that delivered enormous pleasure.

I’ve also tasted expensive wines that were impressive but not particularly memorable.

In fact, one of my favorite exercises in class is what I call the Blind Wine Challenge.

The premise is simple. Students are presented with two wines. One is significantly more expensive than the other. The bottles are concealed, the labels are hidden, and participants know nothing about the wines except what is in the glass.

Then they taste.

After conducting this exercise for years, one conclusion has become remarkably consistent: price is an unreliable predictor of enjoyment.

In fact, if I had to bet on the outcome of a blind tasting, I’d probably put my money on the less expensive wine.

Some of the results were genuinely entertaining.

I recall one tasting where the class overwhelmingly preferred a wine costing less than twenty dollars over a competitor priced at nearly four times the amount.

The comments were glowing.

“More balanced.”

“More enjoyable.”

“I’d buy this one.”

Then I revealed the prices.

You could almost hear the collective mental recalibration occurring around the room.

Sometimes the difference in price is modest. Sometimes it is dramatic.

When consumers know the price, reputation, and pedigree of a wine, those factors inevitably influence perception. Remove the label and many assumptions disappear along with it.

A bottle’s price tells you what someone was willing to charge.

It doesn’t tell you how much you’ll enjoy drinking it.

Myth #2: The Best Wines Receive the Highest Scores

Readers of Musings on the Vine may recognize this one.

Over the years, I’ve written extensively about the limitations of the 100-point scoring system.

Scores can be useful.

What they cannot do is tell you whether you’ll enjoy a wine.

Taste remains personal.

A 95-point wine that doesn’t align with your preferences is still a wine you probably won’t enjoy.

Meanwhile, an 89-point wine that matches your palate perfectly may deliver tremendous pleasure.

Numbers create an illusion of precision.

One lesson I’ve learned over the years is that every rating system carries biases.

Publications have subscribers to satisfy. Advertisers to keep happy. Relationships to maintain.

None of that necessarily invalidates a score.

It simply reminds us that scores are opinions, not measurements handed down from a scientific instrument.

Monte Ishige produced a subscription-only wine newsletter called Wine Sense. Because it accepted no advertising, its reviews were insulated from the commercial pressures that inevitably influence much of the wine press. Unfortunately, subscriptions alone could not sustain the publication. The lesson was not that objectivity is impossible, but that every rating system comes with its own limitations and biases.

The key takeaway is that the wine you enjoy is rarely tied to a score. There are a thousand other factors that influence enjoyment. Over the years, I’ve become far more interested in why I enjoy a wine than in how many points someone assigned to it.

Myth #3: Screwcaps Mean Lower Quality

This myth has thankfully begun to fade, but it still appears frequently.

Many consumers continue to associate cork with quality and screwcaps with inexpensive wine.

The truth is that closure type tells you very little about quality.

Today, some of the world’s most respected producers use screwcaps for wines of exceptional quality.

The decision is often driven by reliability rather than economics.

To understand why, it’s helpful to remember that the wine industry spent years battling the problem of cork taint. In certain markets, the incidence of cork-related spoilage became significant enough that producers began actively searching for alternatives.

Perhaps nowhere was this movement more visible than in New Zealand.

In fact, New Zealand’s wine industry became one of the most visible leaders in the transition to screwcaps, driven largely by producers seeking more consistent closures and fewer cork-related faults. The goal was simple: eliminate a preventable fault that was affecting perfectly good wines.

The results were dramatic.

Today, screwcaps dominate New Zealand wine production, including many of the country’s highest-quality Sauvignon Blancs, Chardonnays, Pinot Noirs, and Rieslings.

I’ve always found it amusing that some consumers still view screwcaps as a sign of lower quality while simultaneously praising wines from regions that made the switch specifically to improve quality.

After all, a screwcap almost never suffers from cork taint. The key phrase is “almost never.” This recalls a story about a winery that used bleach to sterilize its winemaking equipment, only to trigger TCA taint throughout the winery. TCA taint is the scientific term for cork taint and does not always involve corks. The use of bleach as a cleaner spoiled thousands of bottles without ever touching a cork. Screwcaps would not have fixed this costly mistake.

Imagine spending a fortune eliminating corks, only to contaminate the winery yourself.

The wine world spent centuries trying to solve the challenges associated with natural cork. When alternatives emerged, many producers adopted them.

Personally, I care far more about what’s in the bottle than what’s sealing it.

Myth #4: Older Wine Is Better Wine

As I’ve discussed elsewhere on Musings on the Vine, wine is one of the few forms of art that is truly alive.

It evolves.

It matures.

It changes.

But unlike what many people seem to believe, evolution does not continue indefinitely.

Eventually every wine reaches its peak and begins the slow journey in the opposite direction.

This myth is closely related to another topic I’ve explored recently: old vines and the role that age plays in wine.

Many consumers assume that all wines improve with age.

In fact, most wines are made to be enjoyed relatively young, rather than cellared for decades.

Certain wines possess the structure, acidity, tannin, and concentration necessary for long-term aging.

Many do not.

Opening a twenty-year-old bottle that was designed to be enjoyed within three years is not an exercise in sophistication.

It’s often an exercise in disappointment.

Case in point. I recently opened a 2011 Tenuta Tascante Ghiaia Nera, which is produced from 100% Nerello Mascalese grapes from the volcanic slopes of Mount Etna (you all know how impressed I am with these wines from prior blogs). The wine was dead: well past its peak, tired, severely maderized, and completely imbalanced. Assuming bottle variation, I opened a second bottle, but it still showed a wine well past its enjoyment window. There, in the glass, was a vivid reminder that older does not necessarily mean better.

Likewise, I’ve watched students bring treasured bottles to class that had been saved for decades awaiting the “perfect” occasion.

Unfortunately, the wine had other ideas.

Sometimes the perfect occasion arrives after the wine’s best years have already passed.

As I’ve written elsewhere, wine has a life cycle. Some wines live longer than others, but eventually every bottle reaches a point where improvement gives way to decline.

The trick is knowing the difference.

Myth #5: Red Wine Always Goes With Meat and White Wine Always Goes With Fish

I suspect this myth has ruined more dinners than bad cooking.

While the guideline contains a grain of truth, it falls apart remarkably quickly.

Blackened tuna often pairs beautifully with red wine.

A delicate Pinot Noir can be magnificent with grilled salmon.

A robust Vermentino can stand up to dishes that would overwhelm many lighter whites.

Pairing wine with food is less about color and more about weight, intensity, preparation, texture, and sauce.

At my Wine and Food in Balance classes I was able to demonstrate how wrong this myth really is. We proved that German Riesling paired with every single course, including salad dressing and grilled sirloin.

The Riesling experiment almost always surprises people.

Most participants assume the pairing will eventually fail.

Instead, they discover something far more interesting.

The wine isn’t changing.

The food is changing the wine.

Watching the reaction is one of my favorite parts of the class.

To pair wine successfully with food, you need to understand how your taste buds work. Salt is a blocker, butter and dairy are buffers. The fact that you can salt a piece of white fish and eat it with a tannic Cabernet is transformative.

Myth #6: Decanting Always Improves Wine

Some wines benefit enormously from decanting.

Others don’t.

And a few can suffer from excessive exposure to oxygen.

Young, tannic wines often improve with aeration.

Older, delicate wines may simply need careful sediment removal.

I’ve encountered enthusiastic wine lovers who decant everything that isn’t nailed down.

That approach strikes me as somewhat like putting hot sauce or salt on every meal.

Sometimes it works.

Sometimes it completely overwhelms what made the wine interesting in the first place.

I decanted a 1970 Château Lafite Rothschild solely to remove its sediment. At first, it was ethereal and translucent. Within fifteen minutes, however, it began to fade, its delicacy giving way to leather. The experience was a reminder that decanting an old wine can begin a race against oxygen.

Like most wine tools, decanting works best when used for the right purpose: removing sediment from older wines that have thrown a plume, or aerating younger, tighter wines to reveal their fruit.

Myth #7: You Can Tell a Great Wine by Its Legs

If I had a dollar for every time someone pointed to the side of a glass and said, “Look at those legs,” I could probably purchase a rather nice bottle of Barolo.

Wine legs are primarily related to alcohol content and surface tension.

They may be interesting.

They may even be beautiful.

What they are not is a reliable indicator of quality.

Some of the greatest wines I’ve ever tasted had completely unremarkable legs.

The reverse is also true.

I recently conducted a sparkling wine tasting and the glasses all showed remarkable legs at the start. As the wines rested in the glass, the legs all but disappeared and one of the students asked if that behavior indicated possible flaws in the wine. I said, no, there are no flaws with these wines. You’re tasting them, aren’t you? Perhaps we’re just not drinking fast enough!

Myth #8: You Need an Expert Palate to Enjoy Wine

This one may be my least favorite.

Far too many people believe that wine appreciation is reserved for experts armed with encyclopedic knowledge and highly trained palates.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

Yes, studying wine enhances appreciation.

So does learning about art, music, architecture, or history.

But expertise is not a prerequisite for enjoyment.

I’ve watched beginners discover a wine they genuinely love and derive every bit as much pleasure from it as an experienced sommelier tasting a classified growth Bordeaux.

I was on a business trip last year and my traveling partner knew almost nothing about wine. My readers know of my fondness for Brunello di Montalcino, and the Italian restaurant we were dining at had a fantastic 2018 Il Poggione Brunello di Montalcino on the list. We bought the bottle and tasted the wine. My traveling partner lit up with joy. She knew almost nothing about the wine’s reputation or pedigree. She simply knew that she loved what was in her glass.

We tried a few more Brunello di Montalcino wines that week and each one was enjoyable, although she compared each one to that first 2018. My own joy was evident, in that I showed someone something they never would have tasted, and the wine became their favorite. Talk about gratifying.

Curiosity helps.

A willingness to learn helps.

Beyond that, the barriers are surprisingly low.

Myth #9: Great Wine Is Made in the Cellar

This myth is particularly interesting because it overlooks one of the most fundamental lessons in viticulture.

Great wine begins in the vineyard.

The finest winemakers in the world cannot fully compensate for poor-quality fruit.

Give a great winemaker mediocre fruit and there’s only so much magic they can perform. Give them exceptional fruit and their biggest challenge often becomes staying out of the way.

I’ve often said that winemaking is equal parts art, science, and agriculture.

But if forced to choose where great wine originates, I would choose the vineyard every time.

The cellar refines.

The vineyard creates.

One lesson reinforced repeatedly during visits to wineries in Tuscany and Piedmont is how much time great producers spend talking about vineyards and how little time they spend talking about gadgets.

The conversations invariably begin with soils, exposures, elevations, drainage, and weather.

Technology comes later.

That’s not a coincidence.

Great winemakers spend an astonishing amount of time trying not to interfere with what the vineyard has already accomplished.

Spend an evening with Chiara Boschis or Giorgio Rivetti and you will understand how important their vineyards are.

Why These Myths Survive

One of the reasons wine myths persist is that wine is wonderfully complex.

Simple answers are appealing.

Unfortunately, wine rarely cooperates.

The longer I study wine, the more convinced I become that most interesting wine questions are best answered with the phrase:

“It depends.”

The right wine depends on the occasion.

The best pairing depends on the dish.

The ideal aging period depends on the wine.

The value of a score depends on how you use it.

The influence of vine age depends on many other factors.

In other words, context matters.

A Final Thought

One of the great joys of teaching wine is watching certainty give way to curiosity. The moment someone says, “I never knew that,” a more interesting conversation begins.

After forty years of tasting wine, I’ve learned that the most rewarding experiences often begin with a challenged assumption. Wine still has plenty of surprises left. And if enthusiasts ever stopped debating these myths, what would we talk about over dinner?