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Sensory scientists have built careers around trying to identify flavours that make some wines more popular than others. Now, a couple of Canadian researchers are turning their attention to a much deeper motivation for our wine-buying choices: bad judgment.

Introducing the new consumer behaviour laboratory at the Niagara region's Brock University, a facility devoted to probing such vexing questions as why pictures of kangaroos seem to have such pull with today's consumers and why, when presented with a series of mystery samples, people generally prefer the first wine.

Part psychology lab, part focus-group boardroom and part stage set, the facility, which was launched last week with a $69,000 federal grant, will enable researchers to create a variety of ambiences, including a barrel-cellar tasting room, candle-lit restaurant and liquor store.

"What we're interested in is looking at what types of cues participants would use to evaluate the wine," said Antonia Kronlund, a marketing professor who will oversee the lab with Isabelle Lesschaeve, director of Brock's Cool Climate Oenology and Viticulture Institute. "Independent of the actual quality of the wine or the attributes of the wine, we want to see if we can bias participants, increase or decrease their preference based on other extraneous variables."

Those variables will include not only evocative label designs (like the marsupial graphic of the wildly popular Yellow Tail brand from Australia), but less obvious stimuli such as lighting, background music and the presence of other people in the room. Does, for example, romantic lighting in a restaurant stimulate the urge to splurge on an expensive Bordeaux?

In one project already under way, Prof. Kronlund is examining how consumers tend to construct preferences around the in-person advice of experts, such as sommeliers or store consultants. She says it's surprisingly easy for an authority figure to talk people into loving or hating a wine, regardless of their first impressions. Now she'll be able to test the extent of that influence on randomly selected volunteers by measuring it in the controlled setting of a restaurant and retail store setup.

In another study, Prof. Kronlund plans to explore the psychological basis of what she calls the "annoying" first-is-best phenomenon. In the 1950s, Ferrer Filipello, a researcher at the University of California at Davis, showed that the sequence in which people proceed through a series of wines - say, at a trade fair or in a winery tasting room - strongly affects which they will prefer.

"There is this annoying habit of consumers to choose the first one," says Prof. Kronlund, who hopes to build on Mr. Filipello's work by studying the psychological sources behind the phenomenon. Her working theory: We tend to like what we remember best, and the first wine is the one you keep coming back to as a reference sample. "You put more effort and attention to the first one," she says. "So it's the most memorable."

Prof. Kronlund and Prof. Lesschaeve also hope to chart demographic differences to establish which consumers - young, old, neophytes or connoisseurs - if any, are more susceptible to outside stimuli. Are connoisseurs, for example, really immune to labels or ambience, as they tend to insist? Now, there's an experiment I'd love to watch through a one-way mirror. (The lab will first rely on student volunteers from Brock and later assemble groups from the general population.)

I also can't wait for the Brock lab to compile results of another planned study, one designed to examine how people can modify their preferences in a group setting, especially in the presence of a wine snob. Studies involving court juries and other groups have shown that people are unduly influenced by self-appointed leaders, for example. "Usually, the person who chooses to sit at the head of the table is the one who wants to be the leader, and studies show he's the one who people listen to," Prof. Kronlund says.

In my experience, people who talk loudest and dominate conversations are also far more likely to be collectors of overpriced wine. And if Prof. Kronlund finds herself short of alpha-male volunteers, I can suggest a few rich farts with cases of Sassicaia in their cellars.

Which brings me to the inevitable question: Do we really need PhDs in lab coats to remind us the wine world is teeming with arrogant, self-appointed dictators and irrational buying behaviour?

I think so, actually. Not long ago, I recall a newsroom colleague recounting how a notoriously arrogant Toronto wine collector of my acquaintance (my description, not hers) mentored her with this handy rule of thumb: If you're in a store and don't know what wine to buy, choose the most expensive bottle you can afford.

Now that is the most boneheaded piece of wine advice I have ever heard. If you can show me another consumer product more irrationally priced than wine, I will eat my hat and wash it down with a magnum of lukewarm Hochtaler. Quality and price are so often in such blatant conflict in the wine world, you would do better to choose a bottle with a blindfold on than willfully empty your wallet on something you'd never tasted.

My point: If the authority of science can help consumers feel more comfortable about dismissing the pretentious blather of experts, it would be one giant leap forward for fun, pleasure and fairer pricing.

"This type of work needs to be done, and the only way to do it is to set up these various ambiences and seeing how they affect things," says Hildegarde Heymann, a professor of sensory science in the department of viticulture and enology at UC Davis, one of the world's leading wine schools. Prof. Heymann adds she's "extremely envious" of Brock's consumer behaviour lab and wishes she could secure funding to do similar research within her own department. "They are uniquely suited to doing this work, and they have the potential to do some great stuff."

Prof. Heymann says the subject of wine, more than that of any other consumer product, is loaded with emotional and psychological baggage. The average woman may pay scant attention to the skirt and blouse she pulls on in the morning, she says, yet "people will agonize over a $10 bottle of wine. They tend to take it extraordinarily personally. There is such a need by the consumer to make the right wine choice."

And, Prof. Heymann adds, that is regrettable. "People pick up a beer without thinking about it. They should be able to pick up wine the same way."

bcrosariol@globeandmail.com