Be careful not to fall in love with the better stuff

Well into a review of Geroge Taber’s A Toast to Bargain Wines: How innovators, iconoclasts, and winemaking revolutionaries are changing the way the world drinks Mike Veseth at The Wine Economist wonders about what constitutes a bargain.

He draws the line at $10, which is a good thing I believe since this allows him room to include a lot of pretty good wines in his lists and not just focus on extreme values. Ironically, however, a $10 wine is classified as “premium” and sometimes “super-premium” here in America. The majority of American wine drinkers think of a $10 wine as a splurge.

I have friends who are afraid to try a $10 wine because they fear that they will be able to taste the difference and be forced to turn their backs on the $6 wines they’ve been enjoying for years.

How ya gonna keep ’em down on the farm?

4 thoughts on “Be careful not to fall in love with the better stuff”

  1. The problem with that construction is that it assumes they don’t like the current wines they’re drinking, or beer, or coffee. If they do like them, and $10 or $20 or $whatever is a splurge, no problem — you may wish you could drink at the better level all the time, but you can be content drinking at the current level.

  2. “I have friends who are afraid to try a $10 wine because they fear that they will be able to taste the difference and be forced to turn their backs on the $6 wines they’ve been enjoying for years.”

    That’s a complicated bit of psychology which I bet also applies to beer for some.

    We don’t generally drink wine (not trying to make a point, just don’t) but did once blind taste a 20 Euro wine against a 6 Euro wine in Spain and, yes, we certainly could taste the difference. But the 6 Euro wine was fine, too.

  3. Jeez, they think $10 is too dear? The average cost of supermarket wine in the UK now is $7 a bottle, and it would be difficult to find anything even vaguely decent at under $9 or $10.

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