Andy Warhol: "What’s great about this country is that America started the tradition where the richest consumers buy essentially the same things as the poorest. You can be watching TV and see Coca-Cola, and you know that the President drinks Coke, Liz Taylor drinks Coke, and just think, you can drink Coke, too. A Coke is a Coke and no amount of money can get you a better Coke than the one the bum on the corner is drinking. All the Cokes are the same and all the Cokes are good. Liz Taylor knows it, the President knows it, the bum knows it, and you know it."
A lot depends on what's meant by "wine" and the price range involved.
I like port, for example. I usually have a bottle sitting in my apartment so that I can pour a glass after dinner and drink it while relaxing.
And even without an "educated palate" I -- and other people I've invited to blind-taste who knew less than I did about it -- can taste the difference between, say, a $30 bottle and a $100 bottle. It's not a subtle thing at all; it's a massive difference.
But that's not because of the price; the price reflects the manner of production and the actual quality of the product. The cheap bottle is a blend of wine from several different years, and possibly different producers, may have been just dumped in steel tanks after fermentation to await bottling, etc., while the more expensive stuff is often going to be from a single year and/or single producer, barrel-aged, and so on. This produces a large and obvious difference in the way it tastes.
Once you get into that tier of well-produced port, you won't see much in the way of big jumps in quality for paying more. The difference between, say, a $200 bottle and a $100 bottle is much less than between the $100 bottle and the $30 bottle, despite the larger price jump. At that point you're mostly hunting for particular years which were known to be good, and are expensive because of that plus their scarcity.
It's not true. Yes, there are snobs, and there is a lot of subjectivity involved, an several studies exposed that.
On the other hand, some wines have a certain richness of flavor not present in other wines. Certain aspects of it can be better appreciate by people who developed a certain taste of wines and can differentiate better. They're the target group of the more expensive wines. You pay for a unique experience, for something that you like but you can' really get anywhere else.
True, the prices of certain wines reach ridiculous levels, but it doesn't mean they wouldn't taste better, especially for someone who tasted a lot of wines and can appreciate them. All this in spite of the fact that "objectively better taste" is in fact an oxymoron, since all discussions of taste (as well as beauty etc.) are by nature subjective and all notions of objectivity are assumed because of a certain consensus (by a majority, an authority/experts etc.).
With wine and spirits, you're often paying for rarity, rather than outright quality.
I'm not a huge wine snob (most wines I buy are in the $10-$20 range), but I have tasted some rather expensive wines. In a lot of cases, you're not really paying for "richness of flavor" (a lot of cheaper wines have plenty of richness and balance), you're paying for name and for rarity, especially when it comes to older wines.
I'm actually more into whisky, and I can tell you in no uncertain terms, that the best whisky I have ever tasted in my life costs around $400. Now, that is still somewhat expensive compared to the <$100 whiskies I usually enjoy, but it's not outrageously expensive, especially considering how long a bottle of whisky lasts, when compared to a bottle of wine, once it's opened.
And it was immeasurably better than any multi-thousand dollar whisky I've had the chance to taste. With Macallans, Dalmores, Pappy van Winkle and other high-priced spirits, you are absolutely paying for a name, not necessarily for the quality.
It was a Bunnahabhain XXV, the greatest sherry cask dram I have ever had the pleasure of tasting. I am very close to rationalizing buying a bottle, but I know I can buy four $100 bottles of other whiskies that are 95% as good, and will give me a wider range of experiences, for that same price.
I'm not a huge wine drinker and what I buy is usually on the relatively inexpensive side--though not lowest end. Now and then I have splurged for a premium wine tasting (maybe $50-100 bottles at retail). I do appreciate the difference--slightly. I'd also rather spend that money on a nice bottle of whiskey and stick with ~$10-15/bottle wine:-)
For the most part, I agree with your post. Interestingly, most of my favorite whiskeys are around $400ish too. That said, my absolute favorite (35yr Hibiki) I can absolutely tell the difference with and it's much more expensive than that.
You pay for a unique experience, for something that you like but you can' really get anywhere else.
What you're saying is certainly true for a $200-500 bottle of wine and possibly even a $2000-5000 bottle of wine, but once you get up to $20k you're buying a rare collectors item as an investment vehicle and not a drink.
This is different to soft drinks in other countries... how? Change the drink to whiskey, another popular one, and you can be sure that there's a difference between what the American rich and poor drink.
> no amount of money can get you a better Coke than the one the bum on the corner is drinking. All the Cokes are the same and all the Cokes are good
And coke is not the same everywhere either. My guess is that the prez isn't going to be drinking much watery post-mix coke with his meals.
Similarly, coke in glass bottles is nicer than post-mix coke, and it's more expensive. 'Regular' cokes are in-between. And, for the US with its HFCS coke, you can import the much better-tasting sucrose-coke, which is more expensive to obtain if you're importing it yourself (although a lot of places on the Mexican border already have it).
> This is different to soft drinks in other countries... how?
The US - along with a select few nations - was a pioneer when it comes to mass-consumer economics that leverage a relatively free market to deliver high quality goods to both rich and poor. It required a dramatic leap in productivity, manufacturing output, to get the scale necessary to drive prices down to such an extent. Ford's Model T was arguably the earliest, best example of that. Over eight years post introduction it went from $850 (6k unit sales) to $360 (577k unit sales), eventually bottoming out under $300 (and incomes climbed substantially over that ~16 year total period). Whether we're talking mass production soda, or cars, or radios, or kitchen appliances, the US was particularly a global pioneer at it from ~1880-1980.
> And, for the US with its HFCS coke, you can import the much better-tasting sucrose-coke
To be fair, that's a Warhol quote from 1975. At the time he said it, Coke was still using sugar in the US market. It was 1984 when Coke and Pepsi announced plans to switch to HFCS.
Whenever I go to the US, I always switch to diet coke. Not because of cutting down on that area to compensate for holiday food intake, but because aspartame coke tastes nicer than HFCS coke.
