The Label Problem

On May 24, 1976, nine French wine experts gathered in Paris for a blind tasting. They compared French wines against unknown California bottles.

California won both categories.

The French press refused to cover the results. The merchant who organized it was banned from French tastings for a year.

These weren't amateurs. These were world-class experts. How did they get it so wrong?

They weren't tasting wine. They were tasting labels.

When the labels disappeared, judges had to rely on actual sensory data. No reputation shortcuts. No "this should taste like" assumptions.

Expertise often means knowing what things should taste like rather than what they actually taste like. The label becomes the data.

This happens in every organization. The report from the respected team gets less scrutiny. The newcomer's warning gets dismissed. The famous consultant's framework goes unquestioned.

That's The Buried Warning in reverse. Instead of urgent information getting lost in noise, credentialed information drowns out actual signal.

The French judges thought their expertise owned the answer. They didn't. The wine did.

The bottles from that tasting are now in the Smithsonian. Not because they were the best wines ever made. Because they proved that labels carry more weight than reality.

Strip the labels. Taste the data. The Information Flow shows how to tell the difference between signal and reputation.