7 ms·

I'm admittedly not a wine person but I really wonder how many people can actually recognise a $10 bottle of wine from a $30 bottle of wine - or similar.

by jahaja 10y ago

basseq 10y ago
Probably not, unless you tell them it costs 3x as much. (Given two glasses of the same wine and told one costs more, people will say the more expensive one is better.)
- jahaja 10y ago
  I remember a documentary about some american fine wine forger where even though he's been arrested for the crime there were "fine wine people" that bought the wine that were fooling themselves that just this batch, which they've bought for too much money, was legitimate and obviously delicious.
blang 10y ago
I'm sure some people can tell, but I highly recommend watching sour grapes, there really are some emperor's new clothes moments. http://www.sourgrapesfilm.com/about/ http://www.sourgrapesfilm.com/about/
- jahaja 10y ago
  Ah, yeah, that's the one I was referring to in another reply. Thanks. It's a good watch.
- redindian75 10y ago
  It is available on Netflix streaming https://www.netflix.com/watch/80029708 https://www.netflix.com/watch/80029708
- prawn 10y ago
  Alternatively, Somm is about students trying to pass the brutally difficult Master Sommelier exam. Worth a look IMO: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2204371/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2204371/ I gradually went from "This main guy is a tool" to "Holy crap, he studies incredibly hard. I hope he succeeds."
nightski 10y ago
It depends. To some people beer is what the macro breweries put out and that is it. They haven't experienced all the varieties and options the micro breweries put out. Even if they do try it initially they generally don't like it. It takes a while to develop not only a taste for the stuff but also to be able to distinguish all the different flavors and varieties. Wine is very similar. Price does not equate quality. That said, a very good $10 bottle of wine will be less quality than a very good $30 bottle. It's confused by the fact that there are some pretty outstanding $10 bottles and some pretty horrible $30 bottles. I used to have a $10 favorite that is really solid but started venturing into $15-20 territory and there is a definite quality difference you might not notice if you are new to wine. But wine is far more pretentious than beer and it's best not to get wrapped up in that world. Just drink what you feel tastes good. You'll notice that as you drink more, your tastes change and it's good to try new things. It's pointless to drink a bunch of expensive wine if you haven't experienced much. It takes time to develop an understanding of the varieties and flavors to look for in order to really appreciate what a more expensive wine may offer (or an outstanding cheaper wine!)
- gist 10y ago
  > It's confused by the fact that there are some pretty outstanding $10 bottles and some pretty horrible $30 bottles. The intermittent reinforcement factor at work which lends to 'found one' and makes it interesting (I am guessing..)
- sickrumbear 10y ago
  would love to hear your recommendations at the $10, $15, $20, $25, and $30 price points if you have any!
  - rconti 10y ago
    I love the Ravenswood Old Vin Zinfandel. When I can find it here in the Bay Area, it's about $6 a bottle. One of the best bargains I know of.
  - barrkel 10y ago
    Find a wine shop or bar that does tasting events. Typically a tasting will concentrate on a particular region or grape, and go through 6 to 9 small glasses. Sometimes they'll be done blind, but more often you'll be talked through what to look for. Typically you'll also have some cheese and cold meats to eat - useful to see how the wine reacts to other flavours. For example, malolactic fermentation in a wine brings out a unctuous creamy taste from a good cheese, while other wines make meat more savoury. Pâté is another interesting pairing: different wines can bring out different flavours from the same substance. Wine shops will typically be doing tastings from bottles that they can sell, so they won't be super expensive (but probably more than $10). But rank your own preferences, and notice how your preferences change as you taste different wines - it can happen that a wine that seemed tasty to begin with pales after you've had a different wine. It's a personal journey, IMO, and it's a long enjoyable road.
frozenport 10y ago
Or even if they could, how can you say something tastes objectively better?
- dagw 10y ago
  You can't obviously. But when it comes to wines there are certain flavour characteristics that are desirable for that particular type of wine. So a 'good' wine is a wine that shows more of those characteristics and a 'bad' wine is a wine that has less of those characteristics and more 'undesirable' characteristics. Whether or not you think those characteristics taste good or not is a separate discussion.
- dejv 10y ago
  Can't find the study, but it was statistical analysis of results of different wine competition. The result was something that bad wines was always viewed as bad, but on the good part of spectrum the good wines ranked kind of randomly. So it is more like we know what we do not like, but there is very little agreement on what is considered to be good wine.
dagw 10y ago
Price is only weakly correlated with taste and quality and there are lots of $10 bottle of wines that are superior to lots of $30 bottles of wines. That being said, if I was offered pairs of randomly selected wines from the same grape and region, one costing $10 and the other $30, I'd like to think I'd pick out the $30 wine with a better random success rate. That being said again there is no reason to assume that one would necessarily always prefer the $30 bottle to the $10. However at the price ranges we're talking about here you're not simply paying for taste. You're paying to drink something that is rare and in some way unique and/or interesting.
- _audakel 10y ago
  It's the same with fashion. Gucci and Saks Fifth Ave don't have an increase in quality that can be attributed to the high price over say kohls. But because they charge a high price they seem more valuable, give higher utility to owners and are hence actually become "worth" the higher price
  - dublinben 10y ago
    The clothing found in a luxury department store is of noticeably higher quality than that found in a Kohls. There are definitely diminishing returns in how much quality you get for your money though.
    - douche 10y ago
      On the other hand, the quality differential between markedly more expensive clothing at the Kohls of the world and bargain-basement places like Wal-Mart is neglible.
  - bsder 10y ago
    > It's the same with fashion. Gucci and Saks Fifth Ave don't have an increase in quality that can be attributed to the high price over say kohls. I'm going to disagree a bit. As in many things, the first order of magnitude is a huge jump in quality. After that, the curve drops away. In clothing the jump from say $5 to $50 is huge. The jump from $50 to $500 is generally quite noticeable, but the marginal increase in utility probably may not be as significant (sometimes it is, though). A jump from $500 to $5000 is generally subtle and is generally signalling behavior except in rare circumstances (men's suits spring to mind--the jump from $500 to about $3-4K feels quite astonishing). Other goods have a similar curve at different points. The jump in quality from a Stratocaster-type guitar from about $100 or so to $500 is generally an astonishing jump in quality. The jump from $500 to $1000 is generally quite noticeable even to amateur guitar players. The jump from $1000 to $2000 is generally nice, but quite a bit more subtle and you probably have to be somewhat decent at guitar to notice. Above that, and we're back into signalling behavior territory with very marginal increases in actual utility.
ebiester 10y ago
I honestly believe there's the past and the present when it comes to wine. In the past, there were greater differences because better wineries had better knowledge, better craft, and better land. However, the macro-wineries really upped their game in the last twenty years. Today, the bigger difference is that the macro-wineries are able to create at scale. More wine with lower per-bottle margins is a profitable strategy. That said, there are some truly great wines out there at higher price points, but the real differentiation is how much has been produced.
- thesehands 10y ago
  Totally, Bordeaux decided in 1855 which the best wineries were and the list is largely exactly the same now, a bottle from a first growth is naturally valued more than one from a lesser growth. Interestingly the critique of Robert Parker had so much weight to a wines price in recent years that negociants would wait to price their wines until the final score had been revealed by Parker.
dejv 10y ago
$10 bottle from one area is not comparable to $10 bottle from different area. There are regions where you can get good quality for $10 (a lot of Hungarian regions) and where $30 is just entry level bottle (say, Burgundy). I am sure a lot of people will be able to say difference between $10 and $100 bottle given you are tasting wine from same area and the wine is in same style.
bsder 10y ago
> I really wonder how many people can actually recognise a $10 bottle of wine from a $30 bottle of wine - or similar. The problem is even asking that question. Just because a wine is $3000 does not mean you will like it. Just because a wine is $10 does not mean you will dislike it. The proper question to ask is: "Do I like this wine enough to spend what they are charging?" Personally, if I'm eating rather bold food, a simple, nice, straightforward wine is the ticket--and that's probably less expensive. If I'm being a gourmand and having subtle and delicate food, I'm going to want something with a bit more complexity and probably be willing to pay a touch more. HOWEVER, if you have a wine dealer you can talk to and he figures out you aren't into flexing your "wine penis" but just like good wine, you're going to find your price bands all over the map. Many of those dealers take it as a personal challenge to find things that are cheaper that you will still like. And sometimes they will recommend something expensive saying: "Yes, this one is everything you've heard and then some." As always in these sorts of things, be friendly, talk to people and be genuinely interested even if you are an amateur. You will find that good things happen.
- slantyyz 10y ago
  This article on Vox is worth reading - "Why amateur wine scores are every bit as good as professionals’" http://www.vox.com/2016/12/15/13892364/amateur-wine-scores-critics http://www.vox.com/2016/12/15/13892364/amateur-wine-scores-c...
ThomPete 10y ago
The same amount of people who can recognize a $10000 abstract painting and a painting by a 3 year old :) Just because value is not inherent does not mean that things can't be valuable. The point is the perception of value.
- threeseed 10y ago
  Wine is definitely closer to art than anything. e.g. "Damien Hirst Spot" or "Jackson Pollock Blue Poles".
danielcampos93 10y ago
I think people are only considering part of the story with wine, food, coffee or any of these luxuries. The price does not reflect only the intrinsic value of the good. I may pay 30 dollars for a bottle of wine because I like the label or I like the wineries story. If you ask someone who bought the 30 dollar bottle of Vodka that cost 10 dollars to produce and paid 400 dollars you will get a million answers of what they think it is 'worth'. Having wine at 30,000 ft traveling 700kph in my mind is way cooler than your living room, regardless if its a Petrus 05 or 2 buck chuck
nikanj 10y ago
A $10000 bottle of wine is more valuable than a $1000 bottle for the same reason a $100 bill is more valuable than a $10 bill: enough people believe it to be.
imgabe 10y ago
$10-$30 is about the same "class" of wine. Going to $100+ $500+ or more you might notice a difference. Probably not so much that you'd be willing to pay for it unless that were a trivial amount of money for you.
toomanybeersies 10y ago
How do you tell the difference between a $1 steak and a $10 steak? I'm not a huge wine drinker, but I drink a bit. I feel that price is more about consistency. If you get a $30 bottle of wine, >90% of the bottles are going to be good. If you get a $5 bottle of wine, there are some good bottles, but most of them are not good wines. I've had some very good bargain priced wines, but I've also had my share of $5 wines that taste like vinegar. There's also diminishing returns. Generally a $30 bottle of wine is going to be a lot better than a $5 bottle of wine, but a $100 bottle of wine isn't going to be proportionately better than a $30 bottle.
- daurnimator 10y ago
  Where are you buying $1 steaks?
  - jasonparallel 10y ago
    Dollar tree has $1 steaks
aluhut 10y ago
It's like with art. The artists name and/or the story is what you pay for.
shard 10y ago
Another factor is the music you are listening to when you drink wine: http://www.wsj.com/articles/can-music-change-the-way-your-wine-tastes-1428071632 http://www.wsj.com/articles/can-music-change-the-way-your-wi...
sytelus 10y ago
Mostly I can't but sometime difference is huge that anyone can appreciate. For example, once I got this Georgian wine which I thought was absolutely the best wine I ever tasted: https://www.vivino.com/wineries/dugladze/wines/lazi-gpyzihckoe-kpectbyahckoe-2014 https://www.vivino.com/wineries/dugladze/wines/lazi-gpyzihck... I had given to many people who were mostly casual people and all of them were blown away by amazing play that this wine put out in their mouths. How much was it? Just under $10 for a bottle (after converting from rubbles)! I have wines that were twice that cost for a small glass which didn't even came close. Unfortunately this wine is practically unknown because for some reason Gergeon wines have no presence in US. If anyone knows where to get Georgian wines, I'm all ears :).
asher_ 10y ago
If you're not into wine, a lot of this kind of stuff seems like it is probably bullshit, but it's not (necessarily). Something I can't recommend enough even if you only have a passing curiosity is to find a wine tasting or event where most variables are held constant within the selection. One of my favourite wineries in Western Australia holds an annual Cabernet tasting with 20 Cabernets of the same vintage from around the world. When you hold the varietal and year constant and you still experience a remarkable range of different tastes, it really helps you to understand how wine experts can do what they do. It's very easy to differentiate wines when tasted one after the other like this, and wine experts/enthusiasts (in addition to their more refined palates) are simply able to make the same kinds of discriminations based on their experience rather than having all the options in front of them.
peteretep 10y ago
> but I really wonder how many > people can actually recognise > a $10 bottle of wine from a > $30 bottle of win You'd be surprised how hard it is to distinguish red from white in a truly blind tasting.
- kurthr 10y ago
  If you mean a random mediocre white wine and a random mediocre red wine... sure. Blanc de Noir is a thing and there are some high acid low tannin reds with minimal fruit and some minerality... I'm sure I could be fooled, they're not expensive, though. If you mean a dyed (red) white whine versus a fruity Pinot, a peppery Syrah, or a leathery Cabernet... not so much. Varietal and the procedures that go into expressing them (oak, tannins) are so different that people with a nose would notice. The same is true in reverse of a buttery oaked Chardonnay that nobody bothers making as a red wine. That's completely ignoring the unique honey flavor of late harvest Butrytus that is unique to Sauternes and some Riesling, which you will never find in a red. Similarly, the taste of age (oxidation) is fairly unique so you would notice the difference between a 3 year old and a 13 year old properly stored wine, unless someone went to amazing lengths (there's money in those hills!).
ubernostrum 10y ago
I like port. Often I keep a bottle around to have a glass after dinner. Usually it's something lower priced -- say, $50 or so -- but for special occasions I'll splurge and get something nicer. And often I'll share a bottle with people I happen to be spending time with, who usually don't know much about port beyond having had a glass once in a while in a restaurant or bar that happened to serve it. They can rarely tell the difference between an average and a slightly-better port (I usually can, but only because I've had enough of it to know what I'm "looking" for when drinking it). But compared to something like a glass of the typical Taylor Fladgate or Graham that they'd get in a restaurant, they can almost always immediately taste the difference in a good vintage, or even a decent LBV. Though one nice thing about port is it's still niche enough that you can often find decent port for not a lot of money, compared to what people get away with in other types of wine, and the expensive stuff is expensive because it really is distinctly better.
Jugurtha 10y ago
According to this frequently cited study, most don't[0]. It states that "unless they are experts, individuals who are unaware of the price enjoy more expensive wines slightly less". Which means it goes like this: an expert tastes the wine, detects elements which they know are found in expensive wines, then judges the wine favorably because they know it's expensive. Grossly stated, the accolade is a consequence of becoming aware of the price. This is similar to this great Penn and Teller "Water Bottle Survey"[sic] video [4:04]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YFKT4jvN4OE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YFKT4jvN4OE [0]: https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/6534611.pdf https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/6534611.pdf

I'm admittedly not a wine person but I really wonder how many people can actually recognise a $10 bottle of wine from a $30 bottle of wine - or similar.

by jahaja 10y ago

I'm admittedly not a wine person but I really wonder how many people can actually recognise a $10 bottle of wine from a $30 bottle of wine - or similar.

basseq 10y ago

Probably not, unless you tell them it costs 3x as much. (Given two glasses of the same wine and told one costs more, people will say the more expensive one is better.)

jahaja 10y ago
I remember a documentary about some american fine wine forger where even though he's been arrested for the crime there were "fine wine people" that bought the wine that were fooling themselves that just this batch, which they've bought for too much money, was legitimate and obviously delicious.

blang 10y ago

I'm sure some people can tell, but I highly recommend watching sour grapes, there really are some emperor's new clothes moments. http://www.sourgrapesfilm.com/about/ http://www.sourgrapesfilm.com/about/

jahaja 10y ago
Ah, yeah, that's the one I was referring to in another reply. Thanks. It's a good watch.
redindian75 10y ago
It is available on Netflix streaming https://www.netflix.com/watch/80029708 https://www.netflix.com/watch/80029708
prawn 10y ago
Alternatively, Somm is about students trying to pass the brutally difficult Master Sommelier exam. Worth a look IMO: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2204371/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2204371/ I gradually went from "This main guy is a tool" to "Holy crap, he studies incredibly hard. I hope he succeeds."

nightski 10y ago

It depends. To some people beer is what the macro breweries put out and that is it. They haven't experienced all the varieties and options the micro breweries put out. Even if they do try it initially they generally don't like it. It takes a while to develop not only a taste for the stuff but also to be able to distinguish all the different flavors and varieties. Wine is very similar. Price does not equate quality. That said, a very good $10 bottle of wine will be less quality than a very good $30 bottle. It's confused by the fact that there are some pretty outstanding $10 bottles and some pretty horrible $30 bottles. I used to have a $10 favorite that is really solid but started venturing into $15-20 territory and there is a definite quality difference you might not notice if you are new to wine. But wine is far more pretentious than beer and it's best not to get wrapped up in that world. Just drink what you feel tastes good. You'll notice that as you drink more, your tastes change and it's good to try new things. It's pointless to drink a bunch of expensive wine if you haven't experienced much. It takes time to develop an understanding of the varieties and flavors to look for in order to really appreciate what a more expensive wine may offer (or an outstanding cheaper wine!)

gist 10y ago
> It's confused by the fact that there are some pretty outstanding $10 bottles and some pretty horrible $30 bottles. The intermittent reinforcement factor at work which lends to 'found one' and makes it interesting (I am guessing..)
sickrumbear 10y ago
would love to hear your recommendations at the $10, $15, $20, $25, and $30 price points if you have any!
- rconti 10y ago
  I love the Ravenswood Old Vin Zinfandel. When I can find it here in the Bay Area, it's about $6 a bottle. One of the best bargains I know of.
- barrkel 10y ago
  Find a wine shop or bar that does tasting events. Typically a tasting will concentrate on a particular region or grape, and go through 6 to 9 small glasses. Sometimes they'll be done blind, but more often you'll be talked through what to look for. Typically you'll also have some cheese and cold meats to eat - useful to see how the wine reacts to other flavours. For example, malolactic fermentation in a wine brings out a unctuous creamy taste from a good cheese, while other wines make meat more savoury. Pâté is another interesting pairing: different wines can bring out different flavours from the same substance. Wine shops will typically be doing tastings from bottles that they can sell, so they won't be super expensive (but probably more than $10). But rank your own preferences, and notice how your preferences change as you taste different wines - it can happen that a wine that seemed tasty to begin with pales after you've had a different wine. It's a personal journey, IMO, and it's a long enjoyable road.

frozenport 10y ago

Or even if they could, how can you say something tastes objectively better?

dagw 10y ago
You can't obviously. But when it comes to wines there are certain flavour characteristics that are desirable for that particular type of wine. So a 'good' wine is a wine that shows more of those characteristics and a 'bad' wine is a wine that has less of those characteristics and more 'undesirable' characteristics. Whether or not you think those characteristics taste good or not is a separate discussion.
dejv 10y ago
Can't find the study, but it was statistical analysis of results of different wine competition. The result was something that bad wines was always viewed as bad, but on the good part of spectrum the good wines ranked kind of randomly. So it is more like we know what we do not like, but there is very little agreement on what is considered to be good wine.

dagw 10y ago

Price is only weakly correlated with taste and quality and there are lots of $10 bottle of wines that are superior to lots of $30 bottles of wines. That being said, if I was offered pairs of randomly selected wines from the same grape and region, one costing $10 and the other $30, I'd like to think I'd pick out the $30 wine with a better random success rate. That being said again there is no reason to assume that one would necessarily always prefer the $30 bottle to the $10. However at the price ranges we're talking about here you're not simply paying for taste. You're paying to drink something that is rare and in some way unique and/or interesting.

_audakel 10y ago
It's the same with fashion. Gucci and Saks Fifth Ave don't have an increase in quality that can be attributed to the high price over say kohls. But because they charge a high price they seem more valuable, give higher utility to owners and are hence actually become "worth" the higher price
- dublinben 10y ago
  The clothing found in a luxury department store is of noticeably higher quality than that found in a Kohls. There are definitely diminishing returns in how much quality you get for your money though.
  - douche 10y ago
    On the other hand, the quality differential between markedly more expensive clothing at the Kohls of the world and bargain-basement places like Wal-Mart is neglible.
- bsder 10y ago
  > It's the same with fashion. Gucci and Saks Fifth Ave don't have an increase in quality that can be attributed to the high price over say kohls. I'm going to disagree a bit. As in many things, the first order of magnitude is a huge jump in quality. After that, the curve drops away. In clothing the jump from say $5 to $50 is huge. The jump from $50 to $500 is generally quite noticeable, but the marginal increase in utility probably may not be as significant (sometimes it is, though). A jump from $500 to $5000 is generally subtle and is generally signalling behavior except in rare circumstances (men's suits spring to mind--the jump from $500 to about $3-4K feels quite astonishing). Other goods have a similar curve at different points. The jump in quality from a Stratocaster-type guitar from about $100 or so to $500 is generally an astonishing jump in quality. The jump from $500 to $1000 is generally quite noticeable even to amateur guitar players. The jump from $1000 to $2000 is generally nice, but quite a bit more subtle and you probably have to be somewhat decent at guitar to notice. Above that, and we're back into signalling behavior territory with very marginal increases in actual utility.

ebiester 10y ago

I honestly believe there's the past and the present when it comes to wine. In the past, there were greater differences because better wineries had better knowledge, better craft, and better land. However, the macro-wineries really upped their game in the last twenty years. Today, the bigger difference is that the macro-wineries are able to create at scale. More wine with lower per-bottle margins is a profitable strategy. That said, there are some truly great wines out there at higher price points, but the real differentiation is how much has been produced.

thesehands 10y ago
Totally, Bordeaux decided in 1855 which the best wineries were and the list is largely exactly the same now, a bottle from a first growth is naturally valued more than one from a lesser growth. Interestingly the critique of Robert Parker had so much weight to a wines price in recent years that negociants would wait to price their wines until the final score had been revealed by Parker.

dejv 10y ago

$10 bottle from one area is not comparable to $10 bottle from different area. There are regions where you can get good quality for $10 (a lot of Hungarian regions) and where $30 is just entry level bottle (say, Burgundy). I am sure a lot of people will be able to say difference between $10 and $100 bottle given you are tasting wine from same area and the wine is in same style.

bsder 10y ago

> I really wonder how many people can actually recognise a $10 bottle of wine from a $30 bottle of wine - or similar. The problem is even asking that question. Just because a wine is $3000 does not mean you will like it. Just because a wine is $10 does not mean you will dislike it. The proper question to ask is: "Do I like this wine enough to spend what they are charging?" Personally, if I'm eating rather bold food, a simple, nice, straightforward wine is the ticket--and that's probably less expensive. If I'm being a gourmand and having subtle and delicate food, I'm going to want something with a bit more complexity and probably be willing to pay a touch more. HOWEVER, if you have a wine dealer you can talk to and he figures out you aren't into flexing your "wine penis" but just like good wine, you're going to find your price bands all over the map. Many of those dealers take it as a personal challenge to find things that are cheaper that you will still like. And sometimes they will recommend something expensive saying: "Yes, this one is everything you've heard and then some." As always in these sorts of things, be friendly, talk to people and be genuinely interested even if you are an amateur. You will find that good things happen.

slantyyz 10y ago
This article on Vox is worth reading - "Why amateur wine scores are every bit as good as professionals’" http://www.vox.com/2016/12/15/13892364/amateur-wine-scores-critics http://www.vox.com/2016/12/15/13892364/amateur-wine-scores-c...

ThomPete 10y ago

The same amount of people who can recognize a $10000 abstract painting and a painting by a 3 year old :) Just because value is not inherent does not mean that things can't be valuable. The point is the perception of value.

threeseed 10y ago
Wine is definitely closer to art than anything. e.g. "Damien Hirst Spot" or "Jackson Pollock Blue Poles".

danielcampos93 10y ago

I think people are only considering part of the story with wine, food, coffee or any of these luxuries. The price does not reflect only the intrinsic value of the good. I may pay 30 dollars for a bottle of wine because I like the label or I like the wineries story. If you ask someone who bought the 30 dollar bottle of Vodka that cost 10 dollars to produce and paid 400 dollars you will get a million answers of what they think it is 'worth'. Having wine at 30,000 ft traveling 700kph in my mind is way cooler than your living room, regardless if its a Petrus 05 or 2 buck chuck

nikanj 10y ago

A $10000 bottle of wine is more valuable than a $1000 bottle for the same reason a $100 bill is more valuable than a $10 bill: enough people believe it to be.

imgabe 10y ago

$10-$30 is about the same "class" of wine. Going to $100+ $500+ or more you might notice a difference. Probably not so much that you'd be willing to pay for it unless that were a trivial amount of money for you.

toomanybeersies 10y ago

How do you tell the difference between a $1 steak and a $10 steak? I'm not a huge wine drinker, but I drink a bit. I feel that price is more about consistency. If you get a $30 bottle of wine, >90% of the bottles are going to be good. If you get a $5 bottle of wine, there are some good bottles, but most of them are not good wines. I've had some very good bargain priced wines, but I've also had my share of $5 wines that taste like vinegar. There's also diminishing returns. Generally a $30 bottle of wine is going to be a lot better than a $5 bottle of wine, but a $100 bottle of wine isn't going to be proportionately better than a $30 bottle.

daurnimator 10y ago
Where are you buying $1 steaks?
- jasonparallel 10y ago
  Dollar tree has $1 steaks

aluhut 10y ago

It's like with art. The artists name and/or the story is what you pay for.

shard 10y ago

Another factor is the music you are listening to when you drink wine: http://www.wsj.com/articles/can-music-change-the-way-your-wine-tastes-1428071632 http://www.wsj.com/articles/can-music-change-the-way-your-wi...

sytelus 10y ago

Mostly I can't but sometime difference is huge that anyone can appreciate. For example, once I got this Georgian wine which I thought was absolutely the best wine I ever tasted: https://www.vivino.com/wineries/dugladze/wines/lazi-gpyzihckoe-kpectbyahckoe-2014 https://www.vivino.com/wineries/dugladze/wines/lazi-gpyzihck... I had given to many people who were mostly casual people and all of them were blown away by amazing play that this wine put out in their mouths. How much was it? Just under $10 for a bottle (after converting from rubbles)! I have wines that were twice that cost for a small glass which didn't even came close. Unfortunately this wine is practically unknown because for some reason Gergeon wines have no presence in US. If anyone knows where to get Georgian wines, I'm all ears :).

asher_ 10y ago

If you're not into wine, a lot of this kind of stuff seems like it is probably bullshit, but it's not (necessarily). Something I can't recommend enough even if you only have a passing curiosity is to find a wine tasting or event where most variables are held constant within the selection. One of my favourite wineries in Western Australia holds an annual Cabernet tasting with 20 Cabernets of the same vintage from around the world. When you hold the varietal and year constant and you still experience a remarkable range of different tastes, it really helps you to understand how wine experts can do what they do. It's very easy to differentiate wines when tasted one after the other like this, and wine experts/enthusiasts (in addition to their more refined palates) are simply able to make the same kinds of discriminations based on their experience rather than having all the options in front of them.

peteretep 10y ago

> but I really wonder how many > people can actually recognise > a $10 bottle of wine from a > $30 bottle of win You'd be surprised how hard it is to distinguish red from white in a truly blind tasting.

kurthr 10y ago
If you mean a random mediocre white wine and a random mediocre red wine... sure. Blanc de Noir is a thing and there are some high acid low tannin reds with minimal fruit and some minerality... I'm sure I could be fooled, they're not expensive, though. If you mean a dyed (red) white whine versus a fruity Pinot, a peppery Syrah, or a leathery Cabernet... not so much. Varietal and the procedures that go into expressing them (oak, tannins) are so different that people with a nose would notice. The same is true in reverse of a buttery oaked Chardonnay that nobody bothers making as a red wine. That's completely ignoring the unique honey flavor of late harvest Butrytus that is unique to Sauternes and some Riesling, which you will never find in a red. Similarly, the taste of age (oxidation) is fairly unique so you would notice the difference between a 3 year old and a 13 year old properly stored wine, unless someone went to amazing lengths (there's money in those hills!).

ubernostrum 10y ago

I like port. Often I keep a bottle around to have a glass after dinner. Usually it's something lower priced -- say, $50 or so -- but for special occasions I'll splurge and get something nicer. And often I'll share a bottle with people I happen to be spending time with, who usually don't know much about port beyond having had a glass once in a while in a restaurant or bar that happened to serve it. They can rarely tell the difference between an average and a slightly-better port (I usually can, but only because I've had enough of it to know what I'm "looking" for when drinking it). But compared to something like a glass of the typical Taylor Fladgate or Graham that they'd get in a restaurant, they can almost always immediately taste the difference in a good vintage, or even a decent LBV. Though one nice thing about port is it's still niche enough that you can often find decent port for not a lot of money, compared to what people get away with in other types of wine, and the expensive stuff is expensive because it really is distinctly better.

Jugurtha 10y ago

According to this frequently cited study, most don't[0]. It states that "unless they are experts, individuals who are unaware of the price enjoy more expensive wines slightly less". Which means it goes like this: an expert tastes the wine, detects elements which they know are found in expensive wines, then judges the wine favorably because they know it's expensive. Grossly stated, the accolade is a consequence of becoming aware of the price. This is similar to this great Penn and Teller "Water Bottle Survey"[sic] video [4:04]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YFKT4jvN4OE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YFKT4jvN4OE [0]: https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/6534611.pdf https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/6534611.pdf