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Should We Buy Expensive Wine?

29 points by cwan 16y ago

ghshephard 16y ago
"So does this mean we should all start swilling Two-Buck Chuck? I’m not so sure. " As a connoisseur of Charles Shaw (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Shaw_wine http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Shaw_wine) I resent the implication that by costing $2, Charles Shaw is somehow an inferior wine. Isn't that the entire _thesis_ of that article, that you don't associate quality based on pricing? From the Wikipedia article: "At the 28th Annual International Eastern Wine Competition, Shaw's 2002 Shiraz received the double gold medal, besting the roughly 2,300 other wines in the competition. Shaw's 2005 California chardonnay was judged Best Chardonnay from California at the Commercial Wine Competition of the 2007 California Exposition and State Fair. The chardonnay received 98 points, a double gold, with accolades of Best of California and Best of Class." I've seen Charles Shaw win at more than one taste testing.
- rflrob 16y ago
  I've found Two-Buck Chuck to be highly inconsistent. It can definitely be very good, but it's also not unusual for it to be pretty bad. On the bright side, when you only spent $2, it's not a huge loss if turns out you got a bad one.
- reven 16y ago
  I got a devious idea, might be worth testing, basically drink some of the expensive wine beforehand, perhaps while preparing the food for your troubles. Thereafter pour some cheaper stuff into the expensive bottle and see if anyone not party to the trick is unimpressed by the cheap wine in the expensive bottle. I am looking to get to the validity of article quote As a result, if we think a wine is cheap, it will taste cheap. And if we think we are tasting a grand cru, then we will taste a grand cru. Our senses are vague in their instructions, and we parse their inputs based upon whatever other knowledge we can summon to the surface.
rkon 16y ago
Sounds exactly like Grey Goose. So many people swear by it thanks to the high price and marketing gimmicks that add perceived value, but put it in a blind taste test (even with a bunch of Grey Goose fanatics) and it gets blown away every time. It's pretty sad how easily consumers can be fooled by cheap tricks like a frosted bottle and the words "made in France". They don't even need the help of alcohol to make poor decisions :p
- jacobolus 16y ago
  The difference is that vodka is by definition nearly flavorless.
- huhtenberg 16y ago
  A bit of a perspective from a professional Russian :) Taste of the vodka is irrelevant. You drink it to get drunk, not to enjoy the taste. So, for example, vodka on the rocks makes as much sense as deep fried caviar - it's a pointless waste of a product. Secondly, and most importantly, you are looking at whether you get a hangover in the morning or not. That's it. So the criteria for a good vodka is (a) doesn't make you cringe when drunk and (b) no hangover. Stick with Wyborowa or Stolichnaya. If not, get a really cheap one and put it through Brita filter a couple of times. This removes all impurities (specifically - the fusel oils, which is what actually hurts the head in the morning), and it will be as good as high-grade commercial product. (edit) By the way, another way to filter cheap vodka is to mix it with cranberries (ideally the wild ones), mush them and let sit for 24 hours. Filter and enjoy. Cranberries absorb the oils and infuse vodka, so not only this reduces the hangover effects, it also makes the vodka significantly more pleasant to drink.
  - morganpyne 16y ago
    Great tips, thank you. And the "professional russian" wouldn't per chance be a reference to this Reddit celebrity, would it :-)? http://www.youtube.com/user/FPSRussia#p/u/0/WOoUVeyaY_8 http://www.youtube.com/user/FPSRussia#p/u/0/WOoUVeyaY_8
  - acgourley 16y ago
    I refuse to believe you can filter vodka cheaper than a distillery, and reject that using britta filters is a cost saving. Unless you steal the filters.
rflrob 16y ago
The article says nothing about the previous experience of the participants. I've been led to understand that many wine critics have highly consistent palates, able to give the same score to a wine within a couple of points even under blind taste tests. On the other hand, the inter-rater reliability is relatively low. I would be interested to see how professional raters compare on similar studies to the ones presented.
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]
- Blarat 16y ago
  well during a wine tasting competition in sweden the winner managed to not only name all wines, she also managed to say which region AND producer it was. So yes if you make the same test with experts the result would be quite different. And most expensive wines need to mature before you enjoy them, if you uncork them right away it won't be a very pleasant experience.
huhtenberg 16y ago
> Although the people were told that all five wines were different, the scientists weren’t telling the truth: there were only three different wines. I did the same experiment with beers few years back. Showed friends three different ales, poured one of them into three glasses and bet they couldn't tell which glass had which ale. Though exact answers differed, all of them thought there were three different beers in those glasses. That was truly epic :) On the other hand I ran the same test with cheap and expensive port and people could easily tell which one is which. I also find that the same is true for wines - there is a noticeable difference between $5 and $30 wine, but once it gets over $50, then telling them apart becomes much harder. One should really have the palate for that, and very few people do.
- dons 16y ago
  It's hard to distinguish cheap larger; it is relatively easy to distinguish microbrewed ale though.
- colomon 16y ago
  I would say that in particular, I'm fairly certain I can usually tell the difference between $5 wine and $15 wine, and the $15 wine is usually markedly better. On the other hand, my experience is that it's usually a lot harder to tell the difference between $15 wine and $50 wine, and as often as not, I prefer the $15 wine. Hmmm... as I think on it, maybe there's something more to it than that. Because when I think of those $15 wines, I'm not thinking "generic $15 wine". I'm thinking, "oooo, that $15 wine I really like." That is to say, I'm not sure I could reliably tell you which of a set of random Zinfandels was $5 and which $15. But I know there are certain reliable $10-$18 Zinfandels -- Ravenswood, Renwood, and Rosenblum leap to mind -- that I like much better than anything I've tasted under $10. That doesn't mean that I have liked every $15 Zinfandel I ever tasted, though.
  - wiredfool 16y ago
    I'd take Rosenblum ahead of the other two, and Seghesio over any of the three. But I think their price has creeped up since I bought a bunch at $16.
johnrob 16y ago
Wine appreciation depends on your experience. If you haven't been exposed to the higher end, you won't miss it and should be perfectly happy with everyday brands (like Charles Shaw). The more exploring you do, however, the more you'll appreciate the higher end. Music is probably a good analogy: the majority of people are fine with mainstream radio content, while the more 'hardcore' tend to be into eccentric stuff.
- Vivtek 16y ago
  I think the thesis of the article is that the more 'hardcore' are into eccentric stuff not because they inherently like eccentric stuff, but that they like being hardcore people who are into eccentric stuff.
  - nandemo 16y ago
    That doesn't seem to be thesis of the article, since they don't mention anything about the wine tasting experience of the subjects. I really doubt that doing similar experiments with wine experts would give the same results.
mv1 16y ago
I've come down to a rule for wine - price correlates well with value in the $15-$25 per bottle range, you get what you pay for. Outside of that it seems random. Two-Buck chuck is pretty good, especially for $2. I've also had expensive wine > $50 which was, in my opinion terrible. (This is for store bought wine, for restaurants multiply prices by 2 to 4).
hop 16y ago
Humans can't judge wine worth a damn. WSJ: A Hint of Hype, A Taste of Illusion - http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703683804574533840282653628.html http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405274870368380457453...
Vivtek 16y ago
I dunno. I've had a truly expensive wine exactly once, at a wine cellar tasting in Würzburg, Germany, and I may have been fooled by the fact that they told me it was expensive, but it was pretty damn good wine. (But roughly equivalent to (far cheaper) Hungarian Tokaji, if you ask me, and that's not just loyalty to my wife's nation.)
- waterlesscloud 16y ago
  Tokaji can get pretty darn pricey, you know.
  - Blarat 16y ago
    yeah the Tokaji Eszencia is expensive. But on the other hand you should be able to easily distinguish the Eszencia in a blind test due to the viscosity
  - Vivtek 16y ago
    But even the medium-price ones are at least as good to my taste as that really expensive Bavarian white. Your mileage may of course vary.
sliverstorm 16y ago
I've personally found two things work very well: 1) When you want nice wine, go to Safeway and buy the $20 bottle with the largest discount (of a type you like, of course). You'll typically pay $12-14 for a pretty good bottle. 2) For those times when you are feeling cheap- well, this is more of a 'be prepared'. Drink cheap straight gin, cheap straight whiskey, and a little straight Wray & Nephew Overproof Rum for a few months. Then, 2-buck chuck tastes gorgeous.
jarin 16y ago
John Cleese did this experiment years ago in his "Wine for the Confused" series.
hop 16y ago
If it was possible to consistently tell the difference in wine quality, then wine judging could be done in a lab by chemical analysis and published in Consumer Reports. This wouldn't matter though because humans innately value alcohol based on price and rarity like the article says - its prestigious to have a Château Rothschild no matter what a scientist says.
iandanforth 16y ago
No.
InclinedPlane 16y ago
As with everything, buy what you like, not what you think you should like or what you think other people like. I'm lucky that I live in a state with a lot of wine makers so I get to buy excellent wines for single digit prices. Even so, if you're spending more than $20 on a bottle of wine all the time then you're probably wasting a lot of money.
aneth 16y ago
I'm sorry, two buck chuck tastes terrible to me. I'm not the kind of person who sits around debating the merits of various wines, but I do like wine and I am somewhat picky. I can't finish a glass of two buck chuck, whether I knew what it was beforehand or not - and both situations happen all the time at parties. I've read this type of study several times - either I have especially sensitive taste or there is something wrong with the studies because it is simply not true that there is no correlation between taste and price. Can I tell the difference between a $15 bottle and a $40 bottle? No, I don't taste price. Are as many $15 bottles excellent as $40 bottles? Absolutely not. One flaw: if you pick a random $40 bottle and a random $15 bottle and ask someone which they like, this is not a valid study. You need to pick a wine that both costs $40 AND IS WORTH $40 and likewise a wine that's WORTH $15. Just because a wine is $90 doesn't mean it's great, but if a wine is $2 it probably sucks. The correlation is there and pretty strong, particularly when moving from $2 to $8 to $15, but it is not perfect. Price != taste.
- DrStalker 16y ago
  How do you evaluate "worth"? If you say the worth of wine is based on the taste then of course wine that is worth more will taste better.
  - aneth 16y ago
    Get someone who can tell the difference between a good $40 bottle and an overpriced $10 bottle with a $40 label, have them pick a wine they think is worth $40 and one worth $10, then do the study.
    - JoachimSchipper 16y ago
      This would prove something closer to "some wines taste better than others", a statement which is not disputed. (E.g. the results of wine tasting contests are not nearly random.)
      - aneth 16y ago
deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
trustfundbaby 16y ago
I started thinking of the ramifications of that last part > You see what happened there? Even though their assumption about wine was false – the more expensive Cabernet didn’t taste better – that assumption still led to increased pleasure, Turns out lying to certain types of women about how much you make or how much you drive, isn't so stupid after all
rbreve 16y ago
One thing I am sure is that wine in France taste a lot better than any other wine
munsito 16y ago
It really depends on personal taste. If you tend to prefer younger, fruitier wines as opposed to heavier, aged wines then going for the $50+ bottle isn't going to do you any good. Some wines actually get worse with age. You can find some really consistently great pinot noirs, merlots, and malbecs for much less than $20. I would steer clear of cabernet sauvignon simply because there is such a wild degree of variation in taste and it is not consistent with price. Be aware of prices by region as well. Some grape varieties grow more easily in certain climates and as a result will be more cheaply produced. The Oregon wines have recently gotten noticeably more expensive, but this has more to do with it becoming a trendy region much like Napa Valley in the past. So be aware of factors in price when buying wines, and your personal preference in wine body should be the ultimate determinant of how much you should be willing to spend. On a side note, if you're ever throwing a dinner party stick with the lighter wines. I break out the schmitt sohne riesling for $8 a bottle during the summer and while it's too sweet for my taste, guests usually love it.

29 points by cwan 16y ago

"So does this mean we should all start swilling Two-Buck Chuck? I’m not so sure. " As a connoisseur of Charles Shaw (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Shaw_wine http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Shaw_wine) I resent the implication that by costing $2, Charles Shaw is somehow an inferior wine. Isn't that the entire _thesis_ of that article, that you don't associate quality based on pricing? From the Wikipedia article: "At the 28th Annual International Eastern Wine Competition, Shaw's 2002 Shiraz received the double gold medal, besting the roughly 2,300 other wines in the competition. Shaw's 2005 California chardonnay was judged Best Chardonnay from California at the Commercial Wine Competition of the 2007 California Exposition and State Fair. The chardonnay received 98 points, a double gold, with accolades of Best of California and Best of Class." I've seen Charles Shaw win at more than one taste testing.

rflrob 16y ago
I've found Two-Buck Chuck to be highly inconsistent. It can definitely be very good, but it's also not unusual for it to be pretty bad. On the bright side, when you only spent $2, it's not a huge loss if turns out you got a bad one.
reven 16y ago
I got a devious idea, might be worth testing, basically drink some of the expensive wine beforehand, perhaps while preparing the food for your troubles. Thereafter pour some cheaper stuff into the expensive bottle and see if anyone not party to the trick is unimpressed by the cheap wine in the expensive bottle. I am looking to get to the validity of article quote As a result, if we think a wine is cheap, it will taste cheap. And if we think we are tasting a grand cru, then we will taste a grand cru. Our senses are vague in their instructions, and we parse their inputs based upon whatever other knowledge we can summon to the surface.

rkon 16y ago

Sounds exactly like Grey Goose. So many people swear by it thanks to the high price and marketing gimmicks that add perceived value, but put it in a blind taste test (even with a bunch of Grey Goose fanatics) and it gets blown away every time. It's pretty sad how easily consumers can be fooled by cheap tricks like a frosted bottle and the words "made in France". They don't even need the help of alcohol to make poor decisions :p

jacobolus 16y ago
The difference is that vodka is by definition nearly flavorless.
huhtenberg 16y ago
A bit of a perspective from a professional Russian :) Taste of the vodka is irrelevant. You drink it to get drunk, not to enjoy the taste. So, for example, vodka on the rocks makes as much sense as deep fried caviar - it's a pointless waste of a product. Secondly, and most importantly, you are looking at whether you get a hangover in the morning or not. That's it. So the criteria for a good vodka is (a) doesn't make you cringe when drunk and (b) no hangover. Stick with Wyborowa or Stolichnaya. If not, get a really cheap one and put it through Brita filter a couple of times. This removes all impurities (specifically - the fusel oils, which is what actually hurts the head in the morning), and it will be as good as high-grade commercial product. (edit) By the way, another way to filter cheap vodka is to mix it with cranberries (ideally the wild ones), mush them and let sit for 24 hours. Filter and enjoy. Cranberries absorb the oils and infuse vodka, so not only this reduces the hangover effects, it also makes the vodka significantly more pleasant to drink.
- morganpyne 16y ago
  Great tips, thank you. And the "professional russian" wouldn't per chance be a reference to this Reddit celebrity, would it :-)? http://www.youtube.com/user/FPSRussia#p/u/0/WOoUVeyaY_8 http://www.youtube.com/user/FPSRussia#p/u/0/WOoUVeyaY_8
- acgourley 16y ago
  I refuse to believe you can filter vodka cheaper than a distillery, and reject that using britta filters is a cost saving. Unless you steal the filters.

rflrob 16y ago

The article says nothing about the previous experience of the participants. I've been led to understand that many wine critics have highly consistent palates, able to give the same score to a wine within a couple of points even under blind taste tests. On the other hand, the inter-rater reliability is relatively low. I would be interested to see how professional raters compare on similar studies to the ones presented.

deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
Blarat 16y ago
well during a wine tasting competition in sweden the winner managed to not only name all wines, she also managed to say which region AND producer it was. So yes if you make the same test with experts the result would be quite different. And most expensive wines need to mature before you enjoy them, if you uncork them right away it won't be a very pleasant experience.

huhtenberg 16y ago

> Although the people were told that all five wines were different, the scientists weren’t telling the truth: there were only three different wines. I did the same experiment with beers few years back. Showed friends three different ales, poured one of them into three glasses and bet they couldn't tell which glass had which ale. Though exact answers differed, all of them thought there were three different beers in those glasses. That was truly epic :) On the other hand I ran the same test with cheap and expensive port and people could easily tell which one is which. I also find that the same is true for wines - there is a noticeable difference between $5 and $30 wine, but once it gets over $50, then telling them apart becomes much harder. One should really have the palate for that, and very few people do.

dons 16y ago
It's hard to distinguish cheap larger; it is relatively easy to distinguish microbrewed ale though.
colomon 16y ago
I would say that in particular, I'm fairly certain I can usually tell the difference between $5 wine and $15 wine, and the $15 wine is usually markedly better. On the other hand, my experience is that it's usually a lot harder to tell the difference between $15 wine and $50 wine, and as often as not, I prefer the $15 wine. Hmmm... as I think on it, maybe there's something more to it than that. Because when I think of those $15 wines, I'm not thinking "generic $15 wine". I'm thinking, "oooo, that $15 wine I really like." That is to say, I'm not sure I could reliably tell you which of a set of random Zinfandels was $5 and which $15. But I know there are certain reliable $10-$18 Zinfandels -- Ravenswood, Renwood, and Rosenblum leap to mind -- that I like much better than anything I've tasted under $10. That doesn't mean that I have liked every $15 Zinfandel I ever tasted, though.
- wiredfool 16y ago
  I'd take Rosenblum ahead of the other two, and Seghesio over any of the three. But I think their price has creeped up since I bought a bunch at $16.

johnrob 16y ago

Wine appreciation depends on your experience. If you haven't been exposed to the higher end, you won't miss it and should be perfectly happy with everyday brands (like Charles Shaw). The more exploring you do, however, the more you'll appreciate the higher end. Music is probably a good analogy: the majority of people are fine with mainstream radio content, while the more 'hardcore' tend to be into eccentric stuff.

Vivtek 16y ago
I think the thesis of the article is that the more 'hardcore' are into eccentric stuff not because they inherently like eccentric stuff, but that they like being hardcore people who are into eccentric stuff.
- nandemo 16y ago
  That doesn't seem to be thesis of the article, since they don't mention anything about the wine tasting experience of the subjects. I really doubt that doing similar experiments with wine experts would give the same results.

mv1 16y ago

I've come down to a rule for wine - price correlates well with value in the $15-$25 per bottle range, you get what you pay for. Outside of that it seems random. Two-Buck chuck is pretty good, especially for $2. I've also had expensive wine > $50 which was, in my opinion terrible. (This is for store bought wine, for restaurants multiply prices by 2 to 4).

hop 16y ago

Humans can't judge wine worth a damn. WSJ: A Hint of Hype, A Taste of Illusion - http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703683804574533840282653628.html http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405274870368380457453...

Vivtek 16y ago

I dunno. I've had a truly expensive wine exactly once, at a wine cellar tasting in Würzburg, Germany, and I may have been fooled by the fact that they told me it was expensive, but it was pretty damn good wine. (But roughly equivalent to (far cheaper) Hungarian Tokaji, if you ask me, and that's not just loyalty to my wife's nation.)

waterlesscloud 16y ago
Tokaji can get pretty darn pricey, you know.
- Blarat 16y ago
  yeah the Tokaji Eszencia is expensive. But on the other hand you should be able to easily distinguish the Eszencia in a blind test due to the viscosity
- Vivtek 16y ago
  But even the medium-price ones are at least as good to my taste as that really expensive Bavarian white. Your mileage may of course vary.

sliverstorm 16y ago

I've personally found two things work very well: 1) When you want nice wine, go to Safeway and buy the $20 bottle with the largest discount (of a type you like, of course). You'll typically pay $12-14 for a pretty good bottle. 2) For those times when you are feeling cheap- well, this is more of a 'be prepared'. Drink cheap straight gin, cheap straight whiskey, and a little straight Wray & Nephew Overproof Rum for a few months. Then, 2-buck chuck tastes gorgeous.

jarin 16y ago

John Cleese did this experiment years ago in his "Wine for the Confused" series.

hop 16y ago

If it was possible to consistently tell the difference in wine quality, then wine judging could be done in a lab by chemical analysis and published in Consumer Reports. This wouldn't matter though because humans innately value alcohol based on price and rarity like the article says - its prestigious to have a Château Rothschild no matter what a scientist says.

iandanforth 16y ago

No.

InclinedPlane 16y ago

As with everything, buy what you like, not what you think you should like or what you think other people like. I'm lucky that I live in a state with a lot of wine makers so I get to buy excellent wines for single digit prices. Even so, if you're spending more than $20 on a bottle of wine all the time then you're probably wasting a lot of money.

aneth 16y ago

I'm sorry, two buck chuck tastes terrible to me. I'm not the kind of person who sits around debating the merits of various wines, but I do like wine and I am somewhat picky. I can't finish a glass of two buck chuck, whether I knew what it was beforehand or not - and both situations happen all the time at parties. I've read this type of study several times - either I have especially sensitive taste or there is something wrong with the studies because it is simply not true that there is no correlation between taste and price. Can I tell the difference between a $15 bottle and a $40 bottle? No, I don't taste price. Are as many $15 bottles excellent as $40 bottles? Absolutely not. One flaw: if you pick a random $40 bottle and a random $15 bottle and ask someone which they like, this is not a valid study. You need to pick a wine that both costs $40 AND IS WORTH $40 and likewise a wine that's WORTH $15. Just because a wine is $90 doesn't mean it's great, but if a wine is $2 it probably sucks. The correlation is there and pretty strong, particularly when moving from $2 to $8 to $15, but it is not perfect. Price != taste.

DrStalker 16y ago
How do you evaluate "worth"? If you say the worth of wine is based on the taste then of course wine that is worth more will taste better.
- aneth 16y ago
  Get someone who can tell the difference between a good $40 bottle and an overpriced $10 bottle with a $40 label, have them pick a wine they think is worth $40 and one worth $10, then do the study.
  - JoachimSchipper 16y ago
    This would prove something closer to "some wines taste better than others", a statement which is not disputed. (E.g. the results of wine tasting contests are not nearly random.)
    - aneth 16y ago

deleted 16y ago

[deleted]

trustfundbaby 16y ago

I started thinking of the ramifications of that last part > You see what happened there? Even though their assumption about wine was false – the more expensive Cabernet didn’t taste better – that assumption still led to increased pleasure, Turns out lying to certain types of women about how much you make or how much you drive, isn't so stupid after all

rbreve 16y ago

One thing I am sure is that wine in France taste a lot better than any other wine

munsito 16y ago

It really depends on personal taste. If you tend to prefer younger, fruitier wines as opposed to heavier, aged wines then going for the $50+ bottle isn't going to do you any good. Some wines actually get worse with age. You can find some really consistently great pinot noirs, merlots, and malbecs for much less than $20. I would steer clear of cabernet sauvignon simply because there is such a wild degree of variation in taste and it is not consistent with price. Be aware of prices by region as well. Some grape varieties grow more easily in certain climates and as a result will be more cheaply produced. The Oregon wines have recently gotten noticeably more expensive, but this has more to do with it becoming a trendy region much like Napa Valley in the past. So be aware of factors in price when buying wines, and your personal preference in wine body should be the ultimate determinant of how much you should be willing to spend. On a side note, if you're ever throwing a dinner party stick with the lighter wines. I break out the schmitt sohne riesling for $8 a bottle during the summer and while it's too sweet for my taste, guests usually love it.