> a $6 bottle of Barefoot can be just as good or better than $50 or $300 bottles of swill
As someone who has blind tasted many wines…
- I can see not being able to tell a difference between $50 bottles and $300 bottles, and even preferring the less expensive option. Some of the tastes can be very subtle, and sometimes the more expensive wines need to be cellared before they really start to shine.
- I honestly don’t think I have ever had a $50 plus bottle of wine that I would not have preferred over Barefoot, which has approximately zero taste markers of a wine made to taste good.
- There are inexpensive wines (sub-$8) that can hold their own versus $20-30 bottles, but that almost always involves generous use of oak chips and an audience that doesn’t mind the imbalanced flavor profile. Most people don’t mind the imbalance, especially since the wines are usually inexpensive, high alcohol, and taste better than wine at a similar price point.
- Folks who can’t differentiate wine taste may be “non-tasters”. I dislike this term of art, but it’s folks who have fewer taste buds per unit area of their tongue. Tell-tale signs are people who salt everything and/or use hot sauce to an extreme level.
- For folks on a budget who want to drink decent wine, Trader Joe’s Reserve wines ~$10 a bottle) punch way above their weight. These are basically $20-30 retail bottles of wine that needed to be cleared at the winery cellars quickly to make space for a new vintage. “Shiners” is the term of art for these bottles pre-labeling.
I could see one becoming convinced price has no correlation with quality given the bullshit that's sold in the $10-20 range. "Why, this was $15 but it's plainly worse than the $8 bottle I had last week!" There's some real crap in that bracket, at least around here. Especially French and Californian. I get the impression France drops their trash on us (the USA) in that price range, relying on their national "brand" to sell it for more than it's worth. Above that range, they're consistently damn good, of course.
[EDIT] As for Californian wine in that range, it seems to have a problem with marketing-over-substance. I expect trying to compete in that range on quality is... frustrating.
> I could see one becoming convinced price has no correlation with quality given the bullshit that's sold in the $10-20 range.
Yeah. There seems to be a lot of variability below $20. That said, it’ll you do the math, it’s tough to make a wine with a good and distinct character below $20 for reds and $15 for whites (I’ve seen it, but it’s relatively rare).
Also, totally agree with your edit. California wines have a lot of challenges with marketing over substance across the whole range or price points.
“honestly don’t think I have ever had a $50 plus bottle of wine that I would not have preferred over Barefoot, which has approximately zero taste markers of a wine made to taste good.”
I can’t believe that. I’ve never had barefoot and probably never will but there’s a lot of totally undrinkable, maybe even semi-poisonous, expensive wine. It’s not even rare. If you buy from a good merchant this is less of a problem but still, expensive wines go bad, and some were never good to begin with.
The most likely expensive dud you're going to see is aged Burgundy reds. Many don't make it.
Very old red wine (e.g. 30+ years), if it's not fortified or a dessert wine, is also not particularly pleasant. I've had some very famous Bordeaux from some celebrated 70s vintage, a sip from Hedonism Wines in London, and it was very much not worth it; more than anything else, it reminded me of clothes in an old person's closet.
On the other hand, the same day I had a sip of something sweet from the 19th century - like 1898 or something - from Crimea, and it wasn't bad. It wasn't great, but it wasn't bad or undrinkable either. Might have been related to these batches - https://quillandpad.com/2020/07/21/the-massandra-collection-...
> but there’s a lot of totally undrinkable, maybe even semi-poisonous, expensive wine
“A lot”? Really? Change your wine merchant if that’s the case.
That said, sure, I mean, if you want to include flawed wines like ones with brett, ones that haven’t been stored properly (e.g., in the sun), wines way past the their peak, etc., then one will certainly run into some bad wines at any price point.
That’s sort of a given, imho, and is in no way a reflection of the quality of the wine.
That certainly doesn’t in general make the high end wine “fake” or not worth a higher price (at least to some point), which is the point of the linked article.
When eating a dish, I can usually identify the ingredients and spices by flavour, but different wines taste more or less the same to me. Some taste different, but I can't say that they taste significantly better than others. Spending $50 more on the food in a restaurant is going to make an enormously bigger difference than spending $50 more on wine. In fact, I find that not drinking wine at all usually makes for a better experience if the food is good, because the super strong flavour of wine destroys your ability to discern flavours on the next bite. Not all that different from putting hot sauce on all your food, in fact.
I strongly agree with what you're saying here and having been thinking along similar lines while browsing this thread. Taste is an important factor in food appreciation and one that most people already have and can develop further, to real value (including health benefits) in eating. It often reflects the quality and freshness of the ingredients (and thus nutritional value), as long as the cook also has some skill and hasn't 'ruined' those ingredients in the finished dish. Taste with wine simply doesn't have the same richness and usefulness, beyond indicating when a wine is 'off' or has been too cheaply/chemically processed, etc.
Not speaking for everyone but I'm pretty sure a lot of people who love extreme hot sauces, it's not so much the flavour but that they just want to feel something for once :o
As someone who has blind tasted many wines…
- I can see not being able to tell a difference between $50 bottles and $300 bottles, and even preferring the less expensive option. Some of the tastes can be very subtle, and sometimes the more expensive wines need to be cellared before they really start to shine.
- I honestly don’t think I have ever had a $50 plus bottle of wine that I would not have preferred over Barefoot, which has approximately zero taste markers of a wine made to taste good.
- There are inexpensive wines (sub-$8) that can hold their own versus $20-30 bottles, but that almost always involves generous use of oak chips and an audience that doesn’t mind the imbalanced flavor profile. Most people don’t mind the imbalance, especially since the wines are usually inexpensive, high alcohol, and taste better than wine at a similar price point.
- Folks who can’t differentiate wine taste may be “non-tasters”. I dislike this term of art, but it’s folks who have fewer taste buds per unit area of their tongue. Tell-tale signs are people who salt everything and/or use hot sauce to an extreme level.
- For folks on a budget who want to drink decent wine, Trader Joe’s Reserve wines ~$10 a bottle) punch way above their weight. These are basically $20-30 retail bottles of wine that needed to be cleared at the winery cellars quickly to make space for a new vintage. “Shiners” is the term of art for these bottles pre-labeling.