If you want to impress your dinner party guests with expensive wine that you can't afford, lie to them about the price of cheap plonk. According to a team of experts at Basel University in Switzerland, cheap wine is perceived as more pleasant when we're told it's expensive. The researchers tested volunteers with three Italian red wines, ranging in price from £8, £25 and £50 – but the prices were incorrectly marked. When the cheapest wine was given deceptively high pricing, it was judged the most pleasant of the three, performing 20 per cent better in the taste test. However, 'taste intensity' wasn't distorted by an incorrect price, suggesting the punchiness of an outstanding bottle of wine can't be hidden.