Wine Snobs Get Taken for a Lot of Money

http://nymag.com/news/features/rudy-kurniawan-wine-fraud-2012-5/

Like most luxury/Veblen goods, the wine world is plagued by thick, opaque layers of spin and marketing.

Is your wallet being slimmed down by expensive wine?

If you're judging a bottle by its price tag, or letting a so-called "expert" (more of a salesman) do your thinking for you, then money is slipping between your fingers.

What does this have to do with a gigantic wine fraud? If experts can't tell the difference between the real, expensive stuff and a "close enough" fake, then chances are that you can't either.

It's all about conspicuous consumption. You buy that expensive bottle of wine to show that you can spend that kind of money on wine. Then you can sit around and talk about how great it is to make it seem like you're really sophisticated. That's what people are paying for, not the actual wine in the bottle.

just give me pint of Guinness

Great article, thanks for posting!

germanpope said:   just give me pint of Guinness
Seriously. Big Flats Light $3.50/ 6 pack. Good stuff.

germanpope said:   just give me pint of Guinness

Tastes like soapy water.

Saw a show bout the ultra frugal and this guy got remnant meat (pigs face, yuck) from the meat department then filled a used bottle of wine with boxed Franzia. His wife got home and he had dinner ready and popped the cork stating "got the good stuff honey". The amusement is that he lived in what appeared to be a very nice home and it was pretty adorned but he did what made him feel right. So lesson learned about feeding ego, generally ego fed here is that we know how do acquire or do things for 1/2 the cost or much less whereas those who have too much money to care are left to feed thier egos with waste on thier own self gratification. Ego fed on knowledge and conservation is far superior.

beatme said:   elektronic said:   germanpope said:   just give me pint of Guinness

Tastes like soapy water.

What kind of soap are you using?

The best kind.

FKAKS said:   
Please don't read this article to think that anyone with a halfway educated palatte can't tell and appreciate the difference between Franzia and fine wine. The lesson should be that there are plenty of good value table wines available under $10-15, and some very nice wines under $25. The higher up the price range you go, the differences are much more subjective. And when you go ultra highdollar, well then you obviously are paying a heavy premium for the experiental factor. But isn't that the same with any luxury good?

I agree. I'm far from a wine expert but I can easily tell the difference between decent wine and trash like Franzia. Between decent and ultra-fancy though? Not so much.

taxmantoo said:   There's a restaurant/wine store in Okemos, Michigan which advertises 100 wines, all rated 85 points or higher, all $15 a bottle or less. They've been doing stuff like this for years, trying to show customers that good wine can be cheap enough to drink every day.

It's possible to even get decent wine from a box, although Franzia is still undrinkable dog piss.

Best way to buy wine I've found:

Locate 2-3 wineries you consistently like. Get in on the members sales where they sell cases 40-60% off.

Never buy any wine from the regular grocery store.

Yeah, old news. I was sure I read it in NY Times a few months back: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/13/nyregion/rudy-kurniawan-wine-d...

Boone's Farm Baby!

Ain't nothing wrong with some Two Buck Chuck and a bag of pork rinds for your romantic dinners...

Edit: Anybody remember Fast Eddie Felson's scheme in "The Color of Money" where he sold generic whiskey along with top shelf liquor labels? I wonder if one could really get away with something like that for long. <scratches stubble on chin methodically>

Yuyak said:   A couple of dozen of my colleagues and I have a tripe-blinded wine-tasting party every other month or so. Basically, we pick a varietal (say Cabernet or Pinot Noir or Malbec or whatever) and everyone brings a bottle with a max price of $40 (no minimum). We tripe-blind with one person paper bagging it, having a second person come in and mark it 1~20 (or however many bottles there are). Throughout the course of the evening, we try each bottle and we individually score them. Finally, at the very end, after the scoring, the bottles are revealed and the purchaser announce the price (third blind).

We've done this probably a half a dozen times now with half a dozen varietals. Of course there are some variation and always some outliers, but EVERY SINGLE TIME as a group we got a statistically significant positive correlation between price and score. We've had some people bring in those $2-$3 bottles and almost everyone was able to pick them out each time. We've also had some people mix in a wrong varietal or duplicate bottles as controls.

Did your correlation still hold when excluding the bargain basement wines?

The stuff which is super cheap by WalMart standards is to wine what pink slime is to beef. It exists to get you and the cute chick from your psych class drunk on what's left of your student loan check.

I suspect the price leaders are cutting significant corners on inputs and QC. Exclude those and what is the result?

FKAKS said:   Please don't read this article to think that anyone with a halfway educated palatte can't tell and appreciate the difference between Franzia and fine wine. The lesson should be that there are plenty of good value table wines available under $10-15, and some very nice wines under $25. The higher up the price range you go, the differences are much more subjective. And when you go ultra highdollar, well then you obviously are paying a heavy premium for the experiental factor. But isn't that the same with any luxury good?

Quoting this because I can only green it once.

There are only so many input expenses which can go into a quality wine made with quality ingredients in a quality process. It's fermented grapes, folks, and machinery does the heavy lifting.

The moral of the story? If you have to be trained to tell what you like, then you're being had, regardless of whether it's a gazillion dollar wine which can only be "enjoyed" by the monied experts, a crucifix submerged in a jar of urine which can only be "appreciated" by the "elites" of the art world, or something as mundane as what color of paint you prefer in your bedroom.

www.wtso.com

Forgive the bad analogy; I don't drink.

What I was getting at was marginal grade grapes somehow being treated and "upgraded" like the pink slime frankenbeef. Call it enhanced grape recovery. One man's trash is another man's treasure. That's the sort of thing which should be excluded from those blind taste tests.

In the spirit of FWF, the goal is to find the value in the wine which saves $$$. I don't like the taste of any of it, but I will concede there is a difference between wine and alcoholic grape drink, often sold by WalMart as though it were wine.

svr411 said:   Yuyak said:   A couple of dozen of my colleagues and I have a tripe-blinded wine-tasting party every other month or so. Basically, we pick a varietal (say Cabernet or Pinot Noir or Malbec or whatever) and everyone brings a bottle with a max price of $40 (no minimum). We tripe-blind with one person paper bagging it, having a second person come in and mark it 1~20 (or however many bottles there are). Throughout the course of the evening, we try each bottle and we individually score them. Finally, at the very end, after the scoring, the bottles are revealed and the purchaser announce the price (third blind).

We've done this probably a half a dozen times now with half a dozen varietals. Of course there are some variation and always some outliers, but EVERY SINGLE TIME as a group we got a statistically significant positive correlation between price and score. We've had some people bring in those $2-$3 bottles and almost everyone was able to pick them out each time. We've also had some people mix in a wrong varietal or duplicate bottles as controls.

Did your correlation still hold when excluding the bargain basement wines?

The stuff which is super cheap by WalMart standards is to wine what pink slime is to beef. It exists to get you and the cute chick from your psych class drunk on what's left of your student loan check.

I suspect the price leaders are cutting significant corners on inputs and QC. Exclude those and what is the result?

You really have to define what a "bargain basement wine" is. Is that a certain price level? Is that mega-brand wines?

Most of the wine DW and I purchase is in the $4-$18 (retail) range, with the $8-$13 range covering about 60% of the total -- with 10% of the wines are in the $18-$35 range. We like Sauvignon Blanc, Pinot and Cabs in that order -- and about 70% of our wine purchases are Sauvignon Blanc or a non-Champagne sparkling wine.

We find that Sauvignon Blancs tend to have the least correlation between price and quality -- and we respond by buying a case of a Sauvignon Blancs bargains at a time. The last one was $7, but drank better than wines that normally cost double to triple that price.

Pinots on the other hand seem to be the most correlated to price. Under $10 they are nearly undrinkable (the exceptions being some Trader Joe's "reserve" labels). You can find some good ones in the $12-$18 range -- but they tend to be few and far between (Whole Foots had an H&G [Here & Gone] label from Central Otago that was great for $12 or $14 recently). For the most part, we need to spend about $22-$28 to get what we enjoy -- New World (usually Oregon, Santa Ynez Valley, or Central Otago), silky smooth and ripe (but not overripe or jammy) berries (in particular cherry and black cherry).

Cabs on the other hand tend to be dreadful regardless of the price if they are from one of the mass producers. We've found some enjoyable at just about every price point from $4 to $30, and we've also found some that were not enjoyable at just about that entire price range -- though we rarely buy $18+ Cabs unless they are knock-your-socks off good.

I find the best way to remove price from consideration is to taste first, and form an opinion -- then learn the price and apply your value filter. That way, your initial judgement is not clouded by price.

I'm on the Nightrain
I love that stuff
I'm on the Nightrain
I can never get enough
I'm on the Nightrain
Never to return-no

RedWolfe01 said:   tolamapS said:   I have a good solution:

- i don't drink wine,
- i drink beer.

First of all, beer quality as far more consistent than wine quality. There is smaller varietal availability of beer, and beer is consistently priced at the same level. E.g., a bottle of Amstel is about the same no matter where you go (at home, it is less than $1 a bottle, at a cheap bar, it is 3-4, and at an expensive restaurants, 5-7).

Not entirely the case, there are tons of varietals and a decent price span once you start adding in the Belgian and microbrews. Just as many beer snobs as wine snobs. Can't think of the last time I had a bottle of beer that was below a buck though, since I avoid the mass produced Bud/Coors/ect... Normally a 6 pack is $8 or so for craftbrews, and more for some imports.

If you are drinking Belgian or "bomber" (22oz special editions, usually) bottles in a bar they can get quite pricey. $8-12 for draft belgian and 16-40 for large bottles. Most bombers are 4-10 at Whole Foods or similar retail.

Overall the price range is smaller, but most beer isn't shared so its per-serving. Even the larger bottles are only 2 smaller than normal servings.

Moving to Germany saved me a lot of money in this regard