{"id":34526,"date":"2026-08-31T12:40:41","date_gmt":"2026-08-31T16:40:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/?p=34526"},"modified":"2026-08-31T09:52:00","modified_gmt":"2026-08-31T13:52:00","slug":"bright-people-know-more-about-wine-how-higher-intelligence-is-reflected-in-deep-domain-knowledge","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/2026\/08\/bright-people-know-more-about-wine-how-higher-intelligence-is-reflected-in-deep-domain-knowledge\/","title":{"rendered":"Bright people know more about wine: how higher intelligence is reflected in deep domain knowledge"},"content":{"rendered":"

Intelligent people tend to perform better at school and at work, as numerous studies have shown. But what happens in domains where incentives such as good grades or financial rewards don\u2019t apply, and where socio-economic status is not a significant factor? Wine knowledge is a case in point. Intelligence researcher Maximilian Krolo of Saarland University has investigated whether intelligence can predict the acquisition of deep knowledge in a specialized domain. The findings have now been published in the journal Intelligence & Cognitive Abilities<\/em><\/strong> in an article co-authored with Professor of Psychology Timothy C. Bates of the University of Edinburgh.<\/p>\n

\u2018Intelligence tests can predict how well someone will perform at school and at work. But in both school and work environments we are either required to learn or are paid to do so, and both settings are closely associated with socioeconomic background. It is therefore difficult to determine whether intelligence itself drives learning or merely indicates that someone is more likely to find themselves in environments in which learning is either required or facilitated,\u2019 says psychologist Maximilian Krolo. He therefore chose a field of knowledge that most people engage with voluntarily and without financial reward: in-depth knowledge of wine.<\/p>\n

Wine as a model domain for specialist knowledge<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u2018Viticulture, wine making and the diversity of wines do not feature on conventional school curricula and knowledge about them is required in very few occupations. For most people, wine knowledge offers neither salary nor career prospects<\/strong>,\u2019 says Maximilian Krolo. At the same time, acquiring a broad understanding of wine and wine making is intellectually demanding. It requires familiarity with grape varieties and wine-growing regions, as well as an understanding of production methods and different wine styles. \u2018Because wine occupies a prominent and culturally visible role in many countries, we assumed that a substantial number of people engage with the subject voluntarily,\u2019 says Maximilian Krolo, a research associate at Saarland University.<\/p>\n

Intelligence test and wine-knowledge quiz completed by 525 participants<\/strong><\/p>\n

The study, conducted by lead author Maximilian Krolo in collaboration with Professor Timothy C. Bates of the University of Edinburgh, UK, involved participants first completing the established ICAR intelligence assessment (International Cognitive Ability Resource). The participants took short cognitive ability tests that assessed their verbal and matrix reasoning, together with the ability to complete number and letter sequences. In a second session, the 525 participants answered 68 multiple-choice questions designed to assess their knowledge of wine. These questions were based on the syllabus for an internationally recognized qualification offered by the Wine & Spirit Education Trust (WSET). The WSET qualification is designed for sommeliers and people working in retail and hospitality but is also a goal for many amateur wine enthusiasts. The study also recorded participants\u2019 professional involvement with wine and their preferred type of drink, allowing both factors to be controlled for statistically.<\/p>\n

Higher intelligence is associated with greater wine knowledge <\/strong><\/p>\n

\u2018Anyone who wants to speak knowledgeably about wine needs more than a collection of facts learned by rote. It is not enough simply to know about vineyard climates, regional grape varieties or different wine-making techniques, you also need to understand, for example, that grapes grown in a cool climate tend to have a higher acidity, and you need to be able to apply that principle to specific cases. It is precisely in these structured knowledge domains that differences in intelligence become apparent,\u2019 explains Maximilian Krolo. And this was confirmed by the analysis of the data gathered during the study: differences in the participants\u2019 intelligence scores statistically accounted for just over nine percent of the observed differences in participants\u2019 wine-knowledge scores \u2013 even in a domain where there are no direct external incentives to acquire knowledge.<\/p>\n

Professional experience strengthens the effect, but drinking wine alone is not enough for deep domain knowledge<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u2018People who work with wine benefit even more from higher intelligence. Cognitive ability and structured experience do more than contribute independently; they reinforce one another,\u2019 says the psychologist. Krolo\u2019s explanation is that professional settings provide repeated exposure to the subject matter and offer feedback within an organized framework \u2013 precisely the conditions under which people with higher cognitive ability learn disproportionately more. \u2018But simply tasting a large number of wines is not enough to develop an extensive knowledge of the subject. Unlike professional experience in the wine trade, a preference for wine does not strengthen the effect of intelligence. What matters is not simply contact with wine, but the structure within which that contact takes place,\u2019 says Krolo.<\/p>\n

Intelligence facilitates learning<\/strong><\/p>\n

For Maximilian Krolo, the study shows that people with higher intelligence acquire deep specialist knowledge even in fields where no one is urging them to learn and where there is no immediate reward for acquiring this specialized knowledge<\/strong>. \u2018This suggests that intelligence really does facilitate learning, rather than merely predicting who will enter environments that are more conducive to or supportive of learning. General knowledge is usually regarded as a broad but shallow pool of knowledge. Our findings show that intelligence also predicts who develops deep knowledge within a single domain, entirely without the pressure of examinations,\u2019 says Krolo, summarizing the results. He adds that higher intelligence appears to be particularly advantageous in environments that offer structure, repetition and feedback. The same principle is likely to apply in education and continuing professional development.<\/p>\n

What the findings mean for the wine world<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u2018There are few fields where experience is as romanticized as it is in the world of wine. The assumption is that you simply need to taste enough wines and connoisseurship will follow naturally. Our data tell a different story. People who like to drink wine do indeed know more about it, but drinking wine alone does not change how much they learn from that experience,\u2019 says Krolo. Structure is the crucial factor. In professional settings in the wine sector, people encounter the same wines repeatedly, have to classify them, receive feedback and correction, and learn within an organized and structured framework. It is under precisely these conditions that intelligence confers an additional advantage.<\/p>\n

\u2018For everyone involved in communicating knowledge about wine, including retailers, hospitality businesses, vineyards, wineries and wine schools, our research has a practical message: wine tastings have a more lasting impact when systematically structured<\/strong>, rather than simply presenting one bottle after another,\u2019 says Krolo. He also believes the study challenges a common stereotype. Knowledge about wine is often regarded as a matter of personal background, taste and accessibility, as something one either possesses or does not. \u2018Our findings show that wine knowledge is a structured body of knowledge that can be learned just like expertise in any other field. It is therefore less elitist than many people assume,\u2019 says Maximilian Krolo, himself a wine collector who has helped with grape harvests in France and Germany on several occasions. There he met people from widely differing backgrounds who had acquired detailed knowledge of wine without anyone requiring them to do so. In fact, it was these encounters that gave him the idea of using wine as a domain for intelligence research.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Intelligent people tend to perform better at school and at work, as numerous studies have shown. But what happens in domains where incentives such as good grades or financial rewards don\u2019t apply, and where socio-economic status is not a significant factor? Wine knowledge is a case in point. Intelligence researcher Maximilian Krolo of Saarland University… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":34527,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"rop_custom_images_group":[],"rop_custom_messages_group":[],"rop_publish_now":"no","rop_publish_now_accounts":[],"rop_publish_now_history":[],"rop_publish_now_status":"pending","neve_meta_sidebar":"","neve_meta_container":"","neve_meta_enable_content_width":"off","neve_meta_content_width":70,"neve_meta_title_alignment":"","neve_meta_author_avatar":"","neve_post_elements_order":"","neve_meta_disable_header":"","neve_meta_disable_footer":"","neve_meta_disable_title":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[891,808,319,339,60,324],"tags":[127,208,146,928,98,548,927],"class_list":["post-34526","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-education","category-food","category-learning-2","category-lifestyle","category-perception","category-senses","tag-decision-making","tag-food","tag-intelligence","tag-knowledge","tag-social","tag-taste","tag-wine"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34526","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34526"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34526\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":34528,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34526\/revisions\/34528"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/34527"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34526"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34526"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34526"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}