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The fact that it's possible to charge this much for certain food & drink is both embarrassing and fascinating to me. On one hand, anyone who's spent the time t

The fact that it's possible to charge this much for certain food & drink is both embarrassing and fascinating to me. On one hand, anyone who's spent the time to cultivate a preference can tell some bit of difference between "crappy" beer/wine/coffee/chocolate/etc. and "the good stuff". On the other hand, taste & smell in particular are so adjusted by expectation, visual presentation, and of course stories of bespoke products from old-world artisans. But even if you're aware of all that, I'm the first to admit it's easy to get enveloped in the more "objective" ways to put food & drink on a magical pedestal (especially those with psychoactive properties like alcohol, caffeine, & other drugs). Learn how different hop varietals contribute different alpha-acid concentrations that affect the taste and smell of beer, or the flavor profile of coffee roasts, or the THC/CBD ratio of marijuana strains... It's not that it's all bullshit, there's some truth there for sure, it's just interesting to me when I find myself geeking out about these things. I don't (think) I fall for stories behind products, but there are many ways humans essentially get lost in, for lack of a better word, the "magic" properties of substances we ingest. I see it as a kind of glitch of the human mind that's both life-enriching and, sometimes, to the detriment of our wallets.

jackhack 9y ago
>nyone who's spent the time to cultivate a preference can tell some bit of difference between "crappy" beer/wine/coffee/chocolate/etc. and "the good stuff". Maybe not. But people will pay for a story. Charles Shaw wines (sold at Trader Joe's stores, and affectionately known as "Three Buck Chuck") has won numerous blind competitions over wines costing a hundred times more. And the famous Stradivarius instruments, valued at north of $1,000,000 cannot easily be discerned from high-end modern violins. But the mystique of the brand, the imagery of these little singing cabinets scraped out of wood 200 years ago, continues to fuel the market. People pay $60 for a single ice cube carved from a glacier. That 100,000 year old ice sure must be yummy.
- lamename 9y ago
  Fully agree. Just wanted to preface by acknowledging that not _all_ products are created equal.
- logfromblammo 9y ago
  That sort of "luxury" ice was refined and distilled down to a throwaway gag in "Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt". Kimmy asks a rich boyfriend to bring ice for a party, and he arrives carrying a hinged, dovetail-jointed wooden box, lined with velvet, containing ornate ice tongs and six perfect ice cubes. The only way it could possibly be funnier is if they were all perfect ice spheres.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
- Shivetya 9y ago
  appealing to people's pretentiousness and such is a fine art and many a marketing scheme has arisen to do just that. exclusivity by price is just one feature. at these price points you can go all out on ingredients as well as packaging. in many cases packaging itself has more effort put into it than the product.
- rosser 9y ago
  I have a friend who makes high-end violin, &c, bows (think: five-figure price tags) who was recently at a conference of sorts for musicians, bow makers, and such. An acquaintance of his was carrying a Stradivarius, on loan from some foundation or other which had it insured for a silly amount of money. The acquaintance played it during a performance at this event. To my friend's somewhat experienced ears, it actually sounded pretty flat (not poorly tuned, but rather dull), relative to so many of the other instruments he's heard. In telling me about this, he didn't seem particularly surprised by that. It's anecdata, but it clearly supports the notion that people will pay mightily for a name and attendant reputation, over actual quality.
  - tebugst 9y ago
    You know man this why blind wine tasting started.
  - jdietrich 9y ago
    The classical world has created a tautological definition of violin quality - a good violin is one that sounds most like a Stradivarius. With modern luthiery techniques, it's not difficult to build a relatively inexpensive instrument that's brighter or darker or more powerful or has more complex overtones, but any "improvement" will be perceived as a deviation from that ideal. Blind tests of violins are remarkably rare, which I think is a largely deliberate decision. I'm reminded of the Judgement of Paris: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judgment_of_Paris_(wine) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judgment_of_Paris_(wine)
    - kpil 9y ago
      I happened to see a YouTube blind-test of a flute, and the next to cheapest flute won. But blind testing is also hard, maybe you need to listen or taste for days,not just a few minutes. I suspect a lot of sugar and artificial flavours are added to products as people are reacting favourably in 30 second blind tests, but given a chance they would appreciate the nuances of less engineered products. The sugar and the esters are getting old fast.
dlwdlw 9y ago
I think it's that any experience is a combination of the senses and that most importantly of all thought is a sense. A sense is anything that happen involuntarily. Gathering data from the environment. Food is mostly nose/tongue senses but also very visual. The tongue also has touch. However stories also implant thoughts and is perhaps the most advanced form of making food taste good as eventually all non-thought sense BECOME thought. Stories however are limited because they create thought only in the form of whatever language is used, say English. It is also the method of gauging quality. "That was great". The highly personal experience must snap to pre-existing words. Subtlety and thus more exact and truer meaning requires combinations of different words. Say a poem. Food itself falls prey to the consumerism feedback loop that creates experiences that try to titillate the senses more and more in an absolute way rather than through subtlety. Spicier and spicier food is an example. As is more and more violent TV. There's nothing wrong with this persay. It's just that the hedonistic treadmill ratchets upwards and eventually you run out of stuff and end up so numbed to subtlety that the small but beautiful things are difficult to appreciate because you've dampened your resolution capabilities. High-food has the same problem as high-art. It takes too much discipline to appreciate and no one has the time. We're all too busy trying to one up the world.
- lamename 9y ago
  That's a good point. I wasn't thinking about thought in that way, but I think you're right. I still put thought in a different realm since (at least for the cases where the price tag is bullshit) informed thoughts have the potential to counteract a purely sensory illusion... A different realm, but definitely an overlapping one.
- IntronExon 9y ago
  I agree with much of what you’ve written, with a caveat about spicy food. I’m fact the vanilloid receptors which capsaicin binds to is damaged over time by exposure to spice. In other words the more spicy food you eat, the less sensitive you will be to spice on a physical level. Where spicy food is concerned, it’s more like opiate addicts requiring higher doses; it is a form of acquired tolerance, albeit on the tongue rather than in the brain.
- 9y ago
ma2rten 9y ago
It's the same with almost any product. Take cars for example: you have to pay thousands of dollars more to get a higher trim, which only has a different design and 1-2 options that are really useful.
IAmGraydon 9y ago
You have to remember that there’s a large group of people to whom $300 means little more than $5. That’s the target demographic for these products, and to them, there is no predicted risk in spending $300 on chocolate. In other words, they have no problem spending the money because there will be no pain if the product disappoints. The money just doesn’t matter. Knowing that, you just have to figure out how to reach them with the promise of a novel, luxurious experience.
- mirimir 9y ago
  Right, I've read about places in NYC where people (young trust-fund kids, anyway) spend $10K on brunch ;) Including champagne, admittedly, but still!
  - jacquesm 9y ago
    If they are spending 10K on brunch it was good foresight of their ancestors to park the loot in a trust fund, otherwise they would likely end up broke.
    - mirimir 9y ago
      Some of them do end up broke. I met this junkie in Amsterdam, who claimed that he'd burned through his trust fund. And then supported his lifestyle as a heroin smuggler, using young trust-fund women as unwitting mules.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- dpark 9y ago
  That’s actually a really small group and most of the people who buy ultra-luxury consumables are not in that group. Michelin star restaurants aren’t supported primarily by the ultra wealthy. Nor are niche luxuries like chocolate bars that cost hundreds of dollars. There is really no predicted risk for anyone on a $300 chocolate bar. You spend the money and get a chocolate bar. If it’s the best chocolate bar in the world, great. If it’s junk, that sucks. Either way your $300 is gone.

jackhack 9y ago

>nyone who's spent the time to cultivate a preference can tell some bit of difference between "crappy" beer/wine/coffee/chocolate/etc. and "the good stuff". Maybe not. But people will pay for a story. Charles Shaw wines (sold at Trader Joe's stores, and affectionately known as "Three Buck Chuck") has won numerous blind competitions over wines costing a hundred times more. And the famous Stradivarius instruments, valued at north of $1,000,000 cannot easily be discerned from high-end modern violins. But the mystique of the brand, the imagery of these little singing cabinets scraped out of wood 200 years ago, continues to fuel the market. People pay $60 for a single ice cube carved from a glacier. That 100,000 year old ice sure must be yummy.

lamename 9y ago
Fully agree. Just wanted to preface by acknowledging that not _all_ products are created equal.
logfromblammo 9y ago
That sort of "luxury" ice was refined and distilled down to a throwaway gag in "Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt". Kimmy asks a rich boyfriend to bring ice for a party, and he arrives carrying a hinged, dovetail-jointed wooden box, lined with velvet, containing ornate ice tongs and six perfect ice cubes. The only way it could possibly be funnier is if they were all perfect ice spheres.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
Shivetya 9y ago
appealing to people's pretentiousness and such is a fine art and many a marketing scheme has arisen to do just that. exclusivity by price is just one feature. at these price points you can go all out on ingredients as well as packaging. in many cases packaging itself has more effort put into it than the product.
rosser 9y ago
I have a friend who makes high-end violin, &c, bows (think: five-figure price tags) who was recently at a conference of sorts for musicians, bow makers, and such. An acquaintance of his was carrying a Stradivarius, on loan from some foundation or other which had it insured for a silly amount of money. The acquaintance played it during a performance at this event. To my friend's somewhat experienced ears, it actually sounded pretty flat (not poorly tuned, but rather dull), relative to so many of the other instruments he's heard. In telling me about this, he didn't seem particularly surprised by that. It's anecdata, but it clearly supports the notion that people will pay mightily for a name and attendant reputation, over actual quality.
- tebugst 9y ago
  You know man this why blind wine tasting started.
- jdietrich 9y ago
  The classical world has created a tautological definition of violin quality - a good violin is one that sounds most like a Stradivarius. With modern luthiery techniques, it's not difficult to build a relatively inexpensive instrument that's brighter or darker or more powerful or has more complex overtones, but any "improvement" will be perceived as a deviation from that ideal. Blind tests of violins are remarkably rare, which I think is a largely deliberate decision. I'm reminded of the Judgement of Paris: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judgment_of_Paris_(wine) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judgment_of_Paris_(wine)
  - kpil 9y ago
    I happened to see a YouTube blind-test of a flute, and the next to cheapest flute won. But blind testing is also hard, maybe you need to listen or taste for days,not just a few minutes. I suspect a lot of sugar and artificial flavours are added to products as people are reacting favourably in 30 second blind tests, but given a chance they would appreciate the nuances of less engineered products. The sugar and the esters are getting old fast.

dlwdlw 9y ago

I think it's that any experience is a combination of the senses and that most importantly of all thought is a sense. A sense is anything that happen involuntarily. Gathering data from the environment. Food is mostly nose/tongue senses but also very visual. The tongue also has touch. However stories also implant thoughts and is perhaps the most advanced form of making food taste good as eventually all non-thought sense BECOME thought. Stories however are limited because they create thought only in the form of whatever language is used, say English. It is also the method of gauging quality. "That was great". The highly personal experience must snap to pre-existing words. Subtlety and thus more exact and truer meaning requires combinations of different words. Say a poem. Food itself falls prey to the consumerism feedback loop that creates experiences that try to titillate the senses more and more in an absolute way rather than through subtlety. Spicier and spicier food is an example. As is more and more violent TV. There's nothing wrong with this persay. It's just that the hedonistic treadmill ratchets upwards and eventually you run out of stuff and end up so numbed to subtlety that the small but beautiful things are difficult to appreciate because you've dampened your resolution capabilities. High-food has the same problem as high-art. It takes too much discipline to appreciate and no one has the time. We're all too busy trying to one up the world.

lamename 9y ago
That's a good point. I wasn't thinking about thought in that way, but I think you're right. I still put thought in a different realm since (at least for the cases where the price tag is bullshit) informed thoughts have the potential to counteract a purely sensory illusion... A different realm, but definitely an overlapping one.
IntronExon 9y ago
I agree with much of what you’ve written, with a caveat about spicy food. I’m fact the vanilloid receptors which capsaicin binds to is damaged over time by exposure to spice. In other words the more spicy food you eat, the less sensitive you will be to spice on a physical level. Where spicy food is concerned, it’s more like opiate addicts requiring higher doses; it is a form of acquired tolerance, albeit on the tongue rather than in the brain.
9y ago

ma2rten 9y ago

It's the same with almost any product. Take cars for example: you have to pay thousands of dollars more to get a higher trim, which only has a different design and 1-2 options that are really useful.

IAmGraydon 9y ago

You have to remember that there’s a large group of people to whom $300 means little more than $5. That’s the target demographic for these products, and to them, there is no predicted risk in spending $300 on chocolate. In other words, they have no problem spending the money because there will be no pain if the product disappoints. The money just doesn’t matter. Knowing that, you just have to figure out how to reach them with the promise of a novel, luxurious experience.

mirimir 9y ago
Right, I've read about places in NYC where people (young trust-fund kids, anyway) spend $10K on brunch ;) Including champagne, admittedly, but still!
- jacquesm 9y ago
  If they are spending 10K on brunch it was good foresight of their ancestors to park the loot in a trust fund, otherwise they would likely end up broke.
  - mirimir 9y ago
    Some of them do end up broke. I met this junkie in Amsterdam, who claimed that he'd burned through his trust fund. And then supported his lifestyle as a heroin smuggler, using young trust-fund women as unwitting mules.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
dpark 9y ago
That’s actually a really small group and most of the people who buy ultra-luxury consumables are not in that group. Michelin star restaurants aren’t supported primarily by the ultra wealthy. Nor are niche luxuries like chocolate bars that cost hundreds of dollars. There is really no predicted risk for anyone on a $300 chocolate bar. You spend the money and get a chocolate bar. If it’s the best chocolate bar in the world, great. If it’s junk, that sucks. Either way your $300 is gone.