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>Even if you might be wrong about the wine or the Strad, you know for absolute certain whether it is making you happy! I also know for absolute certain that I

>Even if you might be wrong about the wine or the Strad, you know for absolute certain whether it is making you happy! I also know for absolute certain that I can't afford expensive wine and that there are people who look down at me because the wine I drink shows I have an "unrefined palate". Normally the concept of "elitism" is hogwash, but this is a pretty clear-cut example. Expensive wine serves to make one seem refined and worldly. It enables rich people to pretend they are more cultured, more intelligent, and just plain better than the plebs because they think they have the taste to appreciate a $500 bottle of wine. Expensive wine is a tool of oppression. I actually don't think that's hyperbole. It is a small tool that doesn't do anywhere near as much damage as the prisons or the war on drugs or Fox News, but it has the same effect.

camjohnson26 6y ago
Sour Grapes is a documentary about someone who sold a bunch of counterfeit wine to elites that couldn’t tell the difference, worth a watch.
- stickfigure 6y ago
  That's probably not a wholly fair characterization. Part of the takeaway is that the perpetrator had a sophisticated palate and spent a lot of time mixing already high-end (but not $thousands/bottle) wine to work out the recipes. I'm as skeptical as anyone that someone can distinguish between a $2k and $200 wine. But to someone that drinks wine daily, the difference between $6 and $60 wine (red, of similar varietal and style) is pretty dramatic. Yeah, some rich guys got suckered, but I don't think they were chumps.
  - camjohnson26 6y ago
    There’s a scene where an actual expert tastes the fake wine and calls it garbage, the people he swindled tended to have a high view of their own palate but little formal training. And yeah by all accounts the swindler had a very sophisticated sense of taste.
    - stickfigure 6y ago
      IIRC that actual expert had been informed it was fake before he tasted it, so it sounded like a BS claim to me.

camjohnson26 6y ago

Sour Grapes is a documentary about someone who sold a bunch of counterfeit wine to elites that couldn’t tell the difference, worth a watch.

stickfigure 6y ago
That's probably not a wholly fair characterization. Part of the takeaway is that the perpetrator had a sophisticated palate and spent a lot of time mixing already high-end (but not $thousands/bottle) wine to work out the recipes. I'm as skeptical as anyone that someone can distinguish between a $2k and $200 wine. But to someone that drinks wine daily, the difference between $6 and $60 wine (red, of similar varietal and style) is pretty dramatic. Yeah, some rich guys got suckered, but I don't think they were chumps.
- camjohnson26 6y ago
  There’s a scene where an actual expert tastes the fake wine and calls it garbage, the people he swindled tended to have a high view of their own palate but little formal training. And yeah by all accounts the swindler had a very sophisticated sense of taste.
  - stickfigure 6y ago
    IIRC that actual expert had been informed it was fake before he tasted it, so it sounded like a BS claim to me.