The power of suggestion

The Catania Wine Enhancer claims to make wines taste better and reduce red wine headache. It has testimonials from many actual wine publications. You just place the wine on the bowl shaped device that uses in their words:

Our trade secret, proprietary design creates a harmonically balanced resonate frequency that affects the water molecules structure. It is now becoming well know that certain materials give off a signature resonate frequency. This is accomplished without the need of electricity or batteries. It is believed by experts to affect the Hydrogen/Oxygen bonding of water cells in a positive way, thus neutralizing impurities in some way. We have targeted specific frequency ranges that are partially responsible for this beneficial result . The copper bowl adds both beauty and the benefits of natural copper. Copper has many know benefits and are worn by millions of people world wide who attest to their healing benefits. Science has yet to fully understand why so many people experience healing affects from wearing these bracelets.

Ok, this is complete crap. Crystals, pyramids and unicorns.

Now, I'm not going to buy one of these, and I was surprised at the testimonials, so I went in search of a dissenting view. I found one who conducted his own double blind study and the results appear to suggest that suggestion has more to do with it than resonant crystals modifying the molecular structure of the wine.

The literature for the enhancer warns to not taste the wine blind, and that "Blind tastings are a bit more complicated than most people understand." Instead, it outlines a procedure where a glass of un-enhanced wine is set aside while the rest of the bottle in enhanced, then the enhanced wine is tasted first. And while I used experience blind tasters in my first trial, in order to be fair (and forestall objections) I decided to taste exactly as the instructions state.

Well, sort of. In order to mitigate the placebo effect I conducted two tastings. In both tasting the participants were told about the enhancer, and what to expect. In the first tasting an enhanced wine was used, but in the second, the wine was a control (yes, I lied to the participants and told them the wine was enhanced). In both cases the wine that was said to be enhanced was considered much changed by the tasters.

In both cases I also had the panel re-taste, after mixing up the glasses, and had them pick out the enhanced wine. The results were predictably mixed, with the enhanced (both actual and assumed) wine not showing better than chance would suggest.

So what does all this really mean? Did the Catania Wine Enhancer work for me? In my own tests I did not taste a difference. In the clinical trial (of which my own results were not included) there was no discernible change. In the casual tastings the wine that was said to be improved was found to be so, even when it was not. This tends to indicate that the power of suggestion was more effective than the actual enhancer.