

Do More Expensive Wines Taste Better? - c0riander
http://freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/12/16/freakonomics-radio-do-more-expensive-wines-taste-better/

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elblanco
I usually find the best wines run between $7-$14.

In fact my current favorite wine runs about $8-9.
[http://www.penfolds.com.au/brand_penfolds/wines/koonunga-
hil...](http://www.penfolds.com.au/brand_penfolds/wines/koonunga-hill/shiraz-
cabernet/)

And I've found this gem for under $12.
[http://wine90.blogspot.com/2007/12/zaccagnini-
montepulciano-...](http://wine90.blogspot.com/2007/12/zaccagnini-
montepulciano-dabruzzo.html)

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blahblahblah
I remember reading an article back in the late 80's or early 90's about wine
chemistry. I think it was in Scientific American or Discover. Basically, the
conclusion they came to was that the difference between a good wine and a
mediocre one had to do with the esterification that occurred during aging and
the amount of vanillin leeched from the wood barrel. They indicated that you
could probably take an inexpensive wine and add a little bit of vanilla
extract to it and it would taste like a better quality wine. (Wine producers
are prohibited from doing this sort of thing themselves, but you can do it at
home.) Of course, this isn't going to make a bottle of mad dog into a
palatable table wine, but it could improve an inexpensive table wine.

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kondro
And, like many things, it is still usually a matter of paying 500% for a 10%
increase in quality.

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trotsky
Like others, I was pretty confused until I reached the part where they said to
buy the $20 bottle instead of the $50 bottle. I think what they're really
tracking here is that high end wines are (usually) over priced.

I'm not an expert at all, but I also think certain varieties tend to be much
more represented in the high end offerings. Cabernets is the one that comes to
mind off the top of my head. I personally won't buy a cab at any price, and I
think that dislike is often shared by my generation and those younger to me,
but older generations tend to be much more prone to buying them. I wonder if
age is a factor (and hence buying power) in which wines people will tend to
rank highly.

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klochner
Who doesn't like cabs? What do you drink with a nice steak?

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trotsky
usually a shiraz/syrah or a malbec

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dminor
There's a correlation, but it's a weak one. Bad wines are almost always very
cheap, but the range between decent and great is too subjective to expect a
strong correlation.

~~~
tptacek
And note that's the range between "decent" and "cheap" within a specific
bracket of varietal and region. Anyone who drinks wine regularly can pick out
a high-end Burgundy Pinot from a collection of mid-range California reds.

And here the analysis starts to break down, because if you're looking for the
characteristics of a great Burgundy, you probably can't source them from
California for $20 a bottle; you can get "cheap" French imports in that price
range, but the price gap between "acceptable" and "good" is wider. In short:
you're not going to get what you don't pay for.

(I'm using Burgundy as an example only because a restaurant blew my mind with
one a couple years ago; someone more wine-literate can substitute better
examples --- for instance, the same "much larger gap in price between decent
and good" may exist for California Bordeaux-style "Meritage" wines).

And should this surprise anyone? Does anyone here think there's low
price/quality correlation in _beer_?

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elblanco
> And should this surprise anyone? Does anyone here think there's low
> price/quality correlation in beer?

Perhaps...there's some superb regular day drinkers that run under
$2/bottle...and some of the more expensive specialty beers can cost upwards of
$8/pint and taste like sewage.

(of course the really cheap beer is pretty universally bad)

~~~
tptacek
Nobody here is going to claim that you can't tell a barrel-aged Belgian-style
ale from a bottle of Newcastle.

There's lot of very drinkable wine at a $20 price point, but a $20 bottle is
unlikely to surprise you with its complexity.

~~~
runT1ME
>but a $20 bottle is unlikely to surprise you with its complexity

Disagree. I've had 20 dollar wine that I feel is more complex and much better
than 60 dollar bottles. Now, there may be better 60 dollar bottles but that
doesn't mean the best 20 dollar isn't better than the worst 100 dollar bottle.

~~~
tptacek
There is clearly a lot of overpriced wine. That's not as entertaining a
conclusion as the one this post is trying to advance.

------
GregBuchholz
<http://youarenotsosmart.com/2010/02/24/fine-wine/>

~~~
ams6110
That's really surprising that the experiment subjects could not tell that the
white wine dyed red was not really red wine. I can't stand white wine and I
like reds quite a bit, to me they taste very different.

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nphase
My favorite wines these days:

\- 2007 Xiloca Garnacha (~$15) [http://www.winechateau.com/vsku1564105_MURET-
XILOCA-GARNACHA...](http://www.winechateau.com/vsku1564105_MURET-XILOCA-
GARNACHA-750ML-2007?utm_source=Google%20Products&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=MURET%20XILOCA%20GARNACHA%202007)

\- 2007 Lucky Star Zinfandel (~$18, can't find a good source online)

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sliverstorm
I had a difficult time swallowing this article. Then I realized that, because
my wine budget caps at $20/bottle, I am living in a very different world.

Hopefully nobody will try to tell me a $5 bottle tastes worse than a $20
bottle purely because of the price- otherwise, my taste buds must be seriously
screwed up.

~~~
ams6110
Heck I buy Franzia in a 5 liter box for $12. Tastes fine to me.

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illumen
Yes.

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Charuru
Price is a function of supply and demand, not of quality.

~~~
ShabbyDoo
Agree, but the relative pricing of various substitutable goods is a function
of the things which are interpreted by the consumer as "quality". W.r.t. this
article, we care about this relative ranking.

