Starbucks is actually a milk drink with coffee added

Today, the reality is that the taste and smell of a large number of urban users have been polluted. They eat takeout all year round, eat industrialized convenience foods, and drink fixed-formula beverages with various additives. Their tastes have been domesticated, but they don't realize it.

Blind test

Not long ago, a "coffee trial" took place in Hangzhou.

The local Consumer Rights Protection Committee (a government-sponsored organization, formerly the Consumer Association) invited nine ordinary consumers who signed up voluntarily to taste seven different brands of takeaway coffee. Ordinary paper cups were used, without any logo displayed. One consumer claimed to be a Starbucks latte lover for 20 years.

The results of the evaluation caused a sensation in the media: because the first and second places were actually from FamilyMart and KFC, and Starbucks was only in the middle; Luckin Coffee, which has been controversial recently, was rated as the most tasty.

This news became a "hot topic" on social media. Then, another big V took advantage of the situation and wrote a popular article with over 100,000 views: "Blind test" exposed the true colors of the pretentious people. By the way, it also criticized the lovers of red wine and hairy crabs.

You see, "blind testing" has become synonymous with "eliminating the false and retaining the true." Just as has happened time and again in history, the masses have "awakened." "Condescending" brands and "showing off" elites have become the objects of ridicule and criticism.

But as always, after "awakening", they are attracted by advertisements again, continue to follow celebrities, believe in experts, and unconsciously like the "addictive feeling".

Test scoring is one thing. Impulse buying is another. Six Walnuts, which started with the "brain-boosting" advertisement, clearly has a can costing twice as much as the walnut kernels. But it still sells 8 billion yuan a year.

As the Hangzhou Consumer Protection Committee urged, "Drinking a cup of coffee has gradually become a daily habit for more and more consumers. We hope that major brands can pay more attention to the tastes of local consumers and provide coffee that is more suitable for local tastes."

The question is, do “local consumers” know what they want? And what exactly is “local taste”?

If blind testing cannot solve this problem, then the significance of blind testing will be greatly reduced.

Why shouldn't we trust the so-called opinions of the general public? It's because they are always too subjective and unaware, and too easily influenced by public opinion and the temptation of interests. If you look at Dianping.com, you will find how many people will give good reviews just to get discount coupons.

The head of the Hangzhou Consumer Protection Committee said, "A thousand people have a thousand tastes, and their scores on coffee are also based on personal preferences. Therefore, this is a social, pure consumer test."

Taste is both personal and social. In other words, even if a thousand people have a thousand tastes, they are all based on the same "Hamlet".

Individual differences do exist. Like light and sound, the chemical composition of food and drink is an objective, measurable quantity. But the perception of taste varies greatly from person to person; some are sensitive, while others are dull. What some people love most, like stinky tofu, others may turn their noses up at. Tastes vary by geography, culture, and even a person's age and mood.

Taste, on the other hand, weaves together basic desires and feelings around food with the thoughts, memories, feelings, and language received by the brain, helping individuals define their social roles, such as "the taste of home" and "the taste of mother".

The reality today is that the taste and smell of a large number of urban users have been polluted, eating takeout all year round, eating industrialized convenience foods, and drinking fixed-formula beverages with various additives. Their tastes have been domesticated, but they don't realize it.

Coffee in the classic sense is different from modern chain coffee drinks. If you look at the number of users of hand-brewed coffee in China, it may be less than 1%. But after adding milk and sugar and standardizing the ratio, it becomes the most popular latte in Starbucks.

The consumer who has been drinking Starbucks latte for 20 years has actually been drinking milk drinks with coffee for 20 years. However, Starbucks is safer and more hygienic than other drinks.

If you compare latte and pour-over coffee (actually a few Starbucks also offer the latter), most people will still choose latte. It is sweet and delicious, simple and easy to drink.

But the truly high-end taste is sour, bitter, astringent, and a mixture of all kinds of flavors, yet it is smooth and natural. How many people can accept this? High-end taste is often not about being delicious. It requires all your senses to communicate with it.

This is true for coffee, tea, and wine.

I looked at the so-called "seven dimensions" of this evaluation: cleanliness, sweetness, aroma, mouth feel, aftertaste, balance, and overall evaluation. It still has a certain degree of professionalism.

But for ordinary consumers who have not received professional training, it is actually meaningless. Because their senses are mostly dull and they have not established a real reference system. No matter how many evaluation dimensions there are, they are not as good as "tasty" or "easy to drink".

The quality of good wine often lies in its delicate balance, richness, complexity and aftertaste. This is the complex dimension. When ordinary people understand "good to drink", they often just think it tastes good, which is just a single dimension.

They do drink, but they don't taste.

Never use ignorance to mock professionalism. The truly good things in this world are often appreciated by only a few people. Masters can make mistakes sometimes, but they have tasted tens of thousands of "different" bottles of wine and spent tens of thousands of hours. How many have you drunk? Don't think you understand free climbing by watching a movie.

Ignorance is never the most terrifying thing. What is truly terrifying is being instigated by people with ulterior motives, taking pride in ignorance and being fearless.

Exercising your appreciation and being able to distinguish good from bad and true from false in a complex world is a necessary condition for becoming an elite. You should spend your whole life training your senses, but more importantly, you should build a system of thought in your mind from then on.

Blind tasting is, of course, an interesting and challenging game. The first step to learning to taste is to open your senses, understand your limitations, and enrich your cognition without being disturbed by factors such as price and brand.

Therefore, guessing which brand or product is not very meaningful. What is really meaningful is to let tasters not be blinded by certain mysteries, but focus on the drink itself and give a clear judgment on the drink.

When blind testing, as a competition, is responsible for providing professional recognition, it needs to introduce proven experts and strict professional judges, and have a clear reference system, because this will be directly linked to commercial interests.

In the wine world, the most famous comparison is the famous Bordeaux winery. In the famous "Judgment of Paris", California's Stag's Leap Winery did win a blind test against the famous Bordeaux winery. From then on, there was one more good winery in the world. In the field of top wines, the gap is often only a millimeter.

Blind tasting is actually a dialogue with the unknown, not a dialogue with price. Because the factors that determine price are both value and scarcity. "You get what you pay for" is true in most cases. The difference between top wine and good wine may be only 100 points and 90 points. But there is a world of difference between good wine and bad wine. Sadly, in the domestic market, bad wines with the price of "996" (99 yuan for 6 bottles) are rampant, but no one has exposed it.

Scarcity makes things valuable. Is there really a 10-fold difference in taste between Yangcheng Lake hairy crabs and ordinary lake crabs? I'm afraid not. For most people, it's even harder to tell the difference unless they come into contact with them every day. But it's not worth buying fakes just for the sake of vanity.

Showing off or flaunting is one of the natural instincts of biological evolution. The purpose is simple, which is to show that you are powerful, attract the opposite sex and scare off your opponents. Unless you are confident enough, you still have to pretend. This is the meaning of the existence of all luxury goods.

The truly powerful ones are the low-key tigers and lions, the ones wearing blue jackets without logos.