What makes the difference between a “usual” wine drinker and a wine lover? An empirical analysis shows that they assess wine quality differently. The first ground his judgement on a thorough reliability enquiry of all the quality claims, signals and reputation, in which wine taste appears to be of little relevance as a source of information. The second relies on a detailed taste enquiry about the taste of the wine and his own taste in which the question of confidence is deemed irrelevant. This empirical symmetry between the two induced us to examine the reasons for their being treated differently by sociology of taste studies