Another article noting that, to at least some degree, one's knowledge about a wine influences what one think of it when drinking. Almost certainly true. But it also points out that wine tasting is subjective and idiosyncratic, and what one likes in a wine is both variable over time and difficult to accurately and objectively compare to what someone else likes in it.
So, yes, you can drink a very satisfactory bottle of wine that retails or $8. You can also find a lot of crappy wine (defined as "wine you don't like") that retails for $8. I end up doing both, because I like wine but am not going to open up a $30-50 bottle every night.
That said, while I have a nice little wine cellar, I have faith that it's good wine because it's wine I've liked in the past — from wineries and labels whose wines I've enjoyed. I do like to break out the bottles for guests, not to impress but to share. Is its distinctiveness just illusory, and do people hypothetically like it better because it's from my wine cellar than if I spigoted it out of a box? Perhaps — though if it's giving them joy and pleasure, then maybe that's a good investment (silver and fine china don't actually make food taste better, either, but …)
But I'm not convinced that "all wine tastes the same" or that all wine is roughly the same quality. That it's a subjective game for each tester? Sure. That label and expectation and heritage can color tasting? Makes sense. That the correlation of cost to quality is profoundly weaker than wineries and wine snobs would like you to believe? Certainly. But I know what I like, and I like it.
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Does Wine from New Jersey Taste the Same as Wine from France?
On May 24, 1976, the British wine merchant Steven Spurrier organized a blind tasting of French and Californian wines. Spurrier was a Francophile and, like most wine experts, didn’t expect the New Wor…
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The key takeaway here isn't that there aren't good and bad wines or that all wine tastes the same. The real upshot is that we should treat brands, regions, and recommendations with a little skepticism and rely on our own experiences and those of people we trust. Which is basically wise advice for just about any product.
Agreed, +Kit Malone. Wine seems particularly prone to price inflation as a means of status / prestige, without necessarily correlation to the same degree (or anywhere close) to an improvement in quality (if that could be objectively measured).
I've spent $150 on a bottle of wine. Was it actually 10x better than a $15 of wine? No. Though, by the same token, quality and experience aren't necessarily amenable to mathematics in that way, no matter how many rating guides one uses.
Oddly enough, my booze pusher has been asking very similar questions in his blog, along with wondering about the Whisky Boom and its inflated prices.
@Marina – Most “matter of taste” booms tend to that sort of thing, I suspect.