4 ms·

If wine is just grape juice that gets you drunk, this makes sense. But wine is also a signally mechanism. There should be a convenient way to say "I have more m

If wine is just grape juice that gets you drunk, this makes sense. But wine is also a signally mechanism. There should be a convenient way to say "I have more money than I can possibly spend," and spending $5000 at a time on wine is one way to do that.

jrockway 17y ago
Why wine and not water?
- loganfrederick 17y ago
  Water as well. Is bottled water that much better (however you want to define that) than tap water put into any other container? There's a good deal of marketing in the bottled water industry.
  - pchristensen 17y ago
    A large portion of the bottled water sold (2/3? can't find source) comes from municipal tap water sources. http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/5467759/ http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/5467759/
- rudyfink 17y ago
  Scarcity and uniqueness or at least the illusion of thereof is probably the big difference between wine and water. With water you can advertise purity and maybe some minerals or additives. You might advertise the uniqueness of the source, but I think you get limited by the whole H20 thing. With wine you can bring in the uniqueness of the grapes and the growing (read weather) conditions in a particular little piece of land on the Earth's surface in a given year. In addition to the arguments about the raw material you can add differences in fermenting, bottling, etc. I think wine has a much better set of facts to build a marketing story on. I'd imagine with sufficient technology you could make some really good and standard wine but then the story aspect would be weakened. This isn't to say that I don't think water markup (30$ a bottle) isn't an extremely impressive display of marketing. In terms of a difference between the cost of the base product and the marked up product water is probably even more amazing than wine. I just think that, in commanding absolute amounts, the scarcity arguments for wine probably make a better story.
FlorinAndrei 17y ago
Water too: http://www.blingh2o.com/ http://www.blingh2o.com/ (link is NSFW in stuck-up places and cultures)
- chronomex 17y ago
  I don't think I can take this seriously. The store ( https://www.blingh2o.com/store/index.php https://www.blingh2o.com/store/index.php ) uses a self-signed certificate ... that expired last September.

jrockway 17y ago

Why wine and not water?

loganfrederick 17y ago
Water as well. Is bottled water that much better (however you want to define that) than tap water put into any other container? There's a good deal of marketing in the bottled water industry.
- pchristensen 17y ago
  A large portion of the bottled water sold (2/3? can't find source) comes from municipal tap water sources. http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/5467759/ http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/5467759/
rudyfink 17y ago
Scarcity and uniqueness or at least the illusion of thereof is probably the big difference between wine and water. With water you can advertise purity and maybe some minerals or additives. You might advertise the uniqueness of the source, but I think you get limited by the whole H20 thing. With wine you can bring in the uniqueness of the grapes and the growing (read weather) conditions in a particular little piece of land on the Earth's surface in a given year. In addition to the arguments about the raw material you can add differences in fermenting, bottling, etc. I think wine has a much better set of facts to build a marketing story on. I'd imagine with sufficient technology you could make some really good and standard wine but then the story aspect would be weakened. This isn't to say that I don't think water markup (30$ a bottle) isn't an extremely impressive display of marketing. In terms of a difference between the cost of the base product and the marked up product water is probably even more amazing than wine. I just think that, in commanding absolute amounts, the scarcity arguments for wine probably make a better story.

FlorinAndrei 17y ago

Water too: http://www.blingh2o.com/ http://www.blingh2o.com/ (link is NSFW in stuck-up places and cultures)

chronomex 17y ago
I don't think I can take this seriously. The store ( https://www.blingh2o.com/store/index.php https://www.blingh2o.com/store/index.php ) uses a self-signed certificate ... that expired last September.