
The Weird World of Expensive Wine (2016) - Tomte
http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-weird-world-of-expensive-wine/
======
dccoolgai
If you're interested in this, watch the Netflix documentary "Sour Grapes"
about wine counterfeiting - millions and millions of dollars per year and most
victims just "don't want to know". Sometimes the counterfeiters produce and
sell wines for 10s of thousands of dollars - and the buyey later finds the
vineyard never even made that kind of wine. William Koch is profiled in the
film, he alone spent millions on counterfeit wine and hired a team of former
CIA operatives to try and track some of it down. Fascinating stuff.

~~~
terminado
From end-to-end, I think the whole pipeline is a waste of human talent. I'm
not ashamed to say, I'd be happy to hear about more people getting fleeced
over bullshit like this.

Of all the things they expend time and effort worrying about: nuanced
preferences for getting drunk.

Let it all burn, I say.

~~~
dredmorbius
Moreso than adtech?

~~~
tlow
More so than anti-virus?

~~~
dredmorbius
Why answer a question with a question?

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myrandomcomment
Collecting wine can be come quite an addiction. My wife and I both love wine
and living in NorCal we have easy access to tons of great producers. We would
taste a wine, like it and say, well lets get a few bottles. That turned into a
case, then a few cases. Right now we have around ~3000 bottles and are in the
process of building a cellar for them. The cellar will hold 4106 bottles. It
is nothing fancy, just a room above the garage that has been well insulated
(spray foam) and as a dedicated AC unit. The unit is pretty cool as it has a
probe you put in a wine bottle full of water and it uses that to set the
temperature.

We have in the last few years had the opportunity to taste and acquire some
older wines from France from the 1960s. It is a completely different taste
profile then anything from CA. Then need to open and sit for awhile (a few
took 6 hours to really open up).

As far as cost go I think the most expense bottle I buy is around $200
(750ML). I just have never been able to justify the cost vs taste difference.
Heck, one of my favorite bottles was $6 from Trader Joe's (a Chilean that they
do not sell anymore).

If you live in the Bay Area I and want to try some very interesting wines that
are not stupidly priced there are some great producers in the Santa Cruz
Mountains area. Try one call Storrs or Silver Mountain.

For Napa - Corison or William Cole on the high end. Both can be aged for
years. We had an opportunity to taste 25 years worth of Corison at a dinner
and it was amazing to see how the years changed the wine.

I tried Screaming Eagle at a friends. Amazing wine, but not that that price
point. But to each their own.

At the end the best wine is the one you like to drink, preferability with
friends and family over a good meal.

~~~
kylebenzle
[1] But don't you know by now that everything you are saying is BS? No one can
tell the difference, there is no "opening up" it is all in your head, your
1960s bottle or your $6, its not just "personal taste" there is no taste
difference, it is proven over and over again.

[1] [https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2013/jun/23/wine-
ta...](https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2013/jun/23/wine-tasting-junk-
science-analysis)

~~~
myrandomcomment
So you are telling me that the taste of wine does not change over time as it
is exposed to oxygen? Hum, I guess I should call all my chemistry professors
and tell them what shame all that chemistry is.

You can find studies that say anything. I would agree that a large number of
people including experts can get it wrong, on the other hand a spectrum
anazlizer will prove that the make up of a wine changes as it is exposed to
air and those changes is something your taste and nose can dectect.

Also I have sat a completley blind tastings and watch as some where able to ID
the grape (or mix) and the region it was from.

I suggest you try it for yourself. Go buy Pinot Noir from let's say Burgundy
France, CA Santa Cruz and Washington State. 2 different bottles from each
area. Then take one set and taste taking care to note how they are different.
Then have someone open the 2nd set from the same region and pour a taste of
each. You should easily be able to pick which wine was from which region based
on what you learned from the first tasting. This is no different then anything
else that picks up the characteristics of the input. Grass fed beef vs corn
fed for example.

I promise you if you open a 62 1st growth and let us sit for an hour and then
open the same bottle and pour a glass from each I will be able to tell you
which is which. Heck the color of the wine even changes a bit as it is
oxidized.

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rodrigocoelho
I just watched Red Obsession. The documentary gives you some perspective about
the recent price hike of the wines of Bordeaux, the Chinese and the expensive
wine markets.

[http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2419284/](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2419284/)

~~~
myrandomcomment
I was at a business dinner in China once. This guy ordered a very old and $$$
wine and then mixed it with Coke in his glass. I wanted to cry.

~~~
bbarn
The last of my pre-scarcity pappy van winkle was drank with diet coke by my
ex. It was a sad day.

~~~
myrandomcomment
I can understand why she is the ex! That is sad.

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cyberferret
A level of eccentricity and quirkiness that inhabit almost every high end
collecting industry, I would think.

I see similar traits in the top end of guitar and amp collectors that I
sometimes associate with. People spending as much as their house is worth on
gear that can give them a similar tone to a scratchy 60's recording...

Somewhere at the very peak of the dollar graph of diminishing returns, a level
of mysticism, voodoo and ethereal subjective qualification tends to creep in.

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jplasmeier
It's interesting that the conclusion serves the opposite purpose of what one
expects from a conclusion. Usually the conclusion serves to put the preceding
argument or analysis in context, but in this case the conclusion does the
opposite by invalidating the subject of the analysis.

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OriginalPenguin
Oh cool, finally an article related to what I've spent the last ten years
working on as a side project.

The way wine and spirits are regulated in the United States can make it very
hard to find any specific bottle that one might be interested in.

So I've created a search engine for wine and spirits. It's called 1000 Corks,
[https://1000corks.com](https://1000corks.com)

It's useful if you read about a bottle of wine that you want to try, or try a
wine in a restaurant and then want to order a few bottles to drink at home.

The backend is Python, Postgres, and Redis.

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elorant
For anyone interested in the intricacies of fine wine trading I would suggest
the documentary "Red Obsession". It interviews a lot of Bordeaux producers and
shows how the economic explosion of China led prices to skyrocket.

[http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2419284/](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2419284/)

BTW, one thing that always troubles me. What if you start collecting wines but
you lack the infrastructure for storing them? Can you rent storage at a
cellar? If someone could build a subscription service for that I'd certainly
pay for it.

~~~
arebop
Yes this is a thing. E.g.,
[http://vintagewinewarehouse.com/](http://vintagewinewarehouse.com/)

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kumarski
These guys make wine molecule by molecule.

Could shift everything.... utilizes 100 times less water.

[http://avawinery.com](http://avawinery.com)

~~~
yarg
Hmm, I wonder if they're doing anything to limit or prevent the use of
molecules with an inorganic chirality bias (judging by New Scientist's
comments on the smell, I imagine not enough).

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jonstewart
I was really looking forward to a true 538 treatment of wine pricing data, but
this is cursory and superficial at best. It would be fun to see how the first
growths compare regarding appreciation and risk, or how they compare to the
top grand crus from Burgundy (DRC, Leflaive, etc.), or whether Pommard is
inflated relative to other premier cru in anticipation of promotion to grand
cru.

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ska
Sadly doesn't seem to be at
[https://github.com/fivethirtyeight/data](https://github.com/fivethirtyeight/data)

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dredmorbius
Mumble something liquid assets exchange values.

How much of this stuff sits in duty-free vault storage?

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nosuchthing
Ethanol and... juice.

~~~
smhost
Are there any good, cheap laboratory wines that can pass blind taste tests?

~~~
blacksmith_tb
You can even dye white wine red and even professional tasters will be
fooled[1].

1: [https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2013/jun/23/wine-
ta...](https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2013/jun/23/wine-tasting-junk-
science-analysis)

~~~
mrob
Students, not professional tasters. "The wine comparison test was carried out
by 54 undergraduates from the Faculty of Oenology of the University of
Bordeaux."

[http://www.daysyn.com/Morrot.pdf](http://www.daysyn.com/Morrot.pdf)

~~~
DonaldFisk
Wine students. I'd expect them to know a lot more about wine than most people.

The wine's colour is part of the experience of drinking wine and affects the
perceived flavour. They probably wouldn't have been fooled so easily if they
were blindfolded.

Knowing a wine's price also affect its perceived flavour:
[https://www.gsb.stanford.edu/insights/baba-shiv-how-wines-
pr...](https://www.gsb.stanford.edu/insights/baba-shiv-how-wines-price-tag-
affect-its-taste)

