4 ms·

A simple flaw in your reasoning - none of the target audience of this comparison is actually a sommelier expert. The whole argument is about an average joe samp

A simple flaw in your reasoning - none of the target audience of this comparison is actually a sommelier expert. The whole argument is about an average joe sampling say a wine costing say 15 euros in france and one costing 500. And the same average joe benefiting very little if at all from paying too much. Its like buying La Ferrari which all experts praise, when all you need is to drive 80kmh to next town. I personally, by no means an expert in any way, can attest the difference is minimal and mostly comes down to one's own preferences / pairing of wine with food in given situation. Its often one of those markets where you buy your own emotions with higher price rather than actual, measurable subjective added value. But yes, if you use a wine costing 2-3 euros, quality of taste in many aspects will be incomparable even to that average joe.

keiferski 7y ago
> And the same average joe benefiting very little if at all from paying too much. Its like buying La Ferrari which all experts praise, when all you need is to drive 80kmh to next town. But that isn't usually why these studies are often referenced, and certainly wasn't what the OP meant. The argument presented is often that there is no difference between high-end wines and low-end wines, which seems to be demonstrably false. That's not the same thing as unless you're an expert, you won't be able to tell the difference. The reality is that wine appreciation, like any field, requires experience and knowledge to build "taste." This is pretty obvious when it comes to other things - no one would suggest that you could understand or appreciate the nuances of a WW2 film without knowing what WW2 was, but somehow when it comes to matters of taste in art, food, etc., the totally-ignorant person's opinion is equal to the expert's. I'd say it's far more likely that contemporary culture is aesthetically/phenomenologically illiterate.
- danenania 7y ago
  Is there a good study out there showing that an expert can reliably distinguish between average and expensive wine? It should be quite easy to prove, but all I ever hear about are studies showing the opposite. Because there's a huge financial incentive in making people believe that expensive wine really tastes better, I think it's reasonable to be more skeptical of wine experts than e.g. WW2 experts.
easytiger 7y ago
> But yes, if you use a wine costing 2-3 euros, quality of taste in many aspects will be incomparable even to that average joe. 2-3 euro wine tastes disgusting to even an "average joe"
- arethuza 7y ago
  Pretty sure I've had wine that cheap in France and it was perfectly OK.
- saiya-jin 7y ago
  I mentioned prices in euro and France for a reason - there are wine in 2-3 euros category that can be bought there ie in Carrefour/Casino, that qualify as say 'table wine' and are perfectly fine for having say with lunch and dinner. No bad/sour aftertaste, taste is simple but very smooth. The country I come from, this would be put in above-average quality (which isn't very nice to my home country, but that's my experience).
gridlockd 7y ago
> Its like buying La Ferrari which all experts praise, when all you need is to drive 80kmh to next town. Any car driver can easily appreciate the difference between a Ferrari and, say, a Ford. You can't say the same about wine. Now, since you're making a utilitarian argument here - what is the point of becoming a sommelier when all it does is make you so sensitive to the taste of wine that you need to spend hundreds of dollars for "a really good one"? On the surface, this sounds like a huge waste of time and money to me. Perhaps having such a fine taste is pure bliss. My suspicion though is that sommeliers are just bullshitters that use their knowledge of expensive produce to get into the company of wealthy people - and earn a decent living.
- keiferski 7y ago
  > Now, since you're making a utilitarian argument here - what is the point of becoming a sommelier when all it does is make you so sensitive to the taste of wine that you need to spend hundreds of dollars for "a really good one"? Because not everything is about maximizing economic transactions?
subpixel 7y ago
For my wedding we blind tasted 20 wines and wound up unanimously choosing $7/bottle Mark West Pinot. It won out over several wines that where four times as expensive.

keiferski 7y ago

> And the same average joe benefiting very little if at all from paying too much. Its like buying La Ferrari which all experts praise, when all you need is to drive 80kmh to next town. But that isn't usually why these studies are often referenced, and certainly wasn't what the OP meant. The argument presented is often that there is no difference between high-end wines and low-end wines, which seems to be demonstrably false. That's not the same thing as unless you're an expert, you won't be able to tell the difference. The reality is that wine appreciation, like any field, requires experience and knowledge to build "taste." This is pretty obvious when it comes to other things - no one would suggest that you could understand or appreciate the nuances of a WW2 film without knowing what WW2 was, but somehow when it comes to matters of taste in art, food, etc., the totally-ignorant person's opinion is equal to the expert's. I'd say it's far more likely that contemporary culture is aesthetically/phenomenologically illiterate.

danenania 7y ago
Is there a good study out there showing that an expert can reliably distinguish between average and expensive wine? It should be quite easy to prove, but all I ever hear about are studies showing the opposite. Because there's a huge financial incentive in making people believe that expensive wine really tastes better, I think it's reasonable to be more skeptical of wine experts than e.g. WW2 experts.

easytiger 7y ago

> But yes, if you use a wine costing 2-3 euros, quality of taste in many aspects will be incomparable even to that average joe. 2-3 euro wine tastes disgusting to even an "average joe"

arethuza 7y ago
Pretty sure I've had wine that cheap in France and it was perfectly OK.
saiya-jin 7y ago
I mentioned prices in euro and France for a reason - there are wine in 2-3 euros category that can be bought there ie in Carrefour/Casino, that qualify as say 'table wine' and are perfectly fine for having say with lunch and dinner. No bad/sour aftertaste, taste is simple but very smooth. The country I come from, this would be put in above-average quality (which isn't very nice to my home country, but that's my experience).

gridlockd 7y ago

> Its like buying La Ferrari which all experts praise, when all you need is to drive 80kmh to next town. Any car driver can easily appreciate the difference between a Ferrari and, say, a Ford. You can't say the same about wine. Now, since you're making a utilitarian argument here - what is the point of becoming a sommelier when all it does is make you so sensitive to the taste of wine that you need to spend hundreds of dollars for "a really good one"? On the surface, this sounds like a huge waste of time and money to me. Perhaps having such a fine taste is pure bliss. My suspicion though is that sommeliers are just bullshitters that use their knowledge of expensive produce to get into the company of wealthy people - and earn a decent living.

keiferski 7y ago
> Now, since you're making a utilitarian argument here - what is the point of becoming a sommelier when all it does is make you so sensitive to the taste of wine that you need to spend hundreds of dollars for "a really good one"? Because not everything is about maximizing economic transactions?

subpixel 7y ago

For my wedding we blind tasted 20 wines and wound up unanimously choosing $7/bottle Mark West Pinot. It won out over several wines that where four times as expensive.