So looks don't count, huh? After a recent blind-tasting in Dublin - one of those scrupulously fair but rather clinical judging sessions when samples are poured from carefully concealed bottles - a heated debate erupted about the aesthetics of wine. Elegant bottles, stylish labels, long corks . . . these things, when you can see them, may all subtly influence our perception of wine - maybe even heighten the pleasure of it, a couple of wine scribes ventured to suggest.
"Nonsense - it's the liquid in the glass that counts. Nothing else matters," said Master of Wine Dermot Nolan, with a ringing finality which it seemed foolhardy to challenge. "Look, it's like going to a party. You walk into a room and you see 10 gorgeous women. Then you get talking to them and you discover they're all plonkers, so you're not going to sleep with any of them. It's the same with wine. All you need to know is whether you really like it or not, no matter what the bottle looks like."
Dermot, ah Dermot, are you really so immune to visual charm, we cried? Does your heart not flutter, just occasionally, with excitement - glimpsing, for instance, across a crowded room, the white label with the little gold crown that heralds Chateau d'Yquem? "No, it doesn't flutter until I've tasted the wine," he said, a master of dispassion. On we marched. "Listen, if you had a delicious meal dished up to you on a plastic plate in a sleazy restaurant, would you honestly enjoy it as much as if it were beautifully served in swish surroundings?" He smiled. A point, maybe, at last.
Whether we like it or not, sensual pleasure and good looks are entwined. We eat and drink and fall in love with our eyes. We're also, in this image-obsessed age, more easily swayed by appearances than ever. If it were not so, the wine industry would hardly be investing such inordinate amounts of money in packaging.
There is nothing new, of course, about the urge to make wine drinkers salivate like Pavlov's dogs at the sight of a particular bottle. The distinctive shape and muted restraint of Dom Perignon champagne - a brilliant 1930s marketing stratagem in a segment awash with similar-looking, flashy, gold bottles - is faithful to the early, fat-bottomed containers the good monk used to stop his precious bubbles from shattering glass, three centuries ago.
By the mid-1940s, Mouton Rothschild had broken away from the Bordeaux tradition of chateau engravings and copperplate script by commissioning a different artist to design the label for each vintage. Thirty years on, along came the Supertuscans - masterly new wines such as Tignanello, costing a fortune but looking the part in tall, heavy bottles with striking typographic labels. Suddenly everything changed. The wine world went design-mad. Look closely at the evidence on the shelves - all those heavily engineered fronts - and you'll see that it still is.
Initially, it was mainly expensive, quality wines which appeared in stylish, modern livery. Think of Cloudy Bay, the textbook New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc which rapidly became a cult wine - helped somewhat, I imagine it's fair to say, by that dreamy, grey landscape on the coolly understated label. Or Heggies, the alluring Australian label which has no words at all - just an arty, ragged-edged sketch of a man on horseback.
But now design-consciousness has filtered right down to the bottom of the market, where consumers need to be especially on their guard. "There is an awful lot of poor-quality, factory wines out there in the marketplace, duping the consumer with their fancy packaging," says Jacinta Delahaye, wine consultant to Dunnes Stores. A case of Beauty and the fleeced? Let's hope Dermot Nolan is right when he says that although this tarting-up process may snare first-time buyers, their tastebuds should protect them from making the same mistake twice.
"Cynical customers always assume that if the bottle looks incredibly stylish, they're being sold a pup," reports Evelyn Jones of The Vintry in Rathgar. "I myself am quite cynical about wine presentation. But there's no doubt that certain very trendy-looking bottles are major sellers to trendy people." As she rightly points out, new packaging is used not just to launch new wines, but to send out a fresh message about old ones. La Vieille Ferme, the Cotes du Ventoux label of the Perrin Brothers of Beaucastel, has reverted to a more traditional label, for instance - probably to reinforce their link with old-fashioned, organic methods. At the more commercial end of the market, there's the new Blue Nun, apparently selling better than ever - whether because of its blue bottle or its drier style, nobody can tell.
But we probably shouldn't be too cynical about the new hunger for handsomeness. Isn't it cheering that it's easier than ever to find modestly-priced wines which both look and taste good? You would have to be blind or pretty bizarre, I suggest, to feel more comfortable with a tacky bottle on your table than a smart one. That's the thing about wine. Unlike most other comestibles, it sits on the dinner table looking exactly the same as it did on the shop shelf - much the same as Heinz tomato ketchup, except that wine is all tramelled with notions of sophistication.
The endless variety of new presentation styles helps to keep life interesting. The non-drip, capsulefree bottle, pioneered by Robert Mondavi in the US several years ago, may have been slavishly adopted the world over in what seems like a few months, and the move towards tall, thin bottles may be toppling over into insanity . . . but labels grow ever more intriguing. All tastes are surely catered for, between the jokey cartoons of Bonny Doon, the classily proportioned parchment of Errazuriz, and Fortant de France which offers input from an artist every year, a la Mouton and an embossed bottle to boot, all for £5.99. Here are a few others which seem to me to represent a happy fusion of good wines, good looks, good prices.