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Comment by dalke | Hacker News Reader

Are there parallels to wine? Why are wines expensive?

I mean, neither art nor wine, in general, are expensive. Only a few - to use the language of this article - curated 'brands' of wine are in the $15,000/bottle range, and some have sold for more than $100K/bottle.

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Oh sure there are, and it's all people with more money than sense, or a strong dose of apathy with more money than sense.

I'm sure I'll get some fine art and wine aficionados in here telling me why I'm wrong, but there is nothing good that really comes out of paying 100k for a bottle of wine, or millions of dollars for a painting (barring charity events).

That cash could be put to much better use than extreme vanity items like that.

I know nothing of the wine world beyond $10/bottle. If there is a parallel, what is the equivalent for wine of the art gallery? Quoting from this article, "art galleries exercise a level of control over prices that, as economist Allison Schrager writes in Quartz, “would be illegal in most industries.”"

For wine this would be ... ?

> I know nothing of the wine world beyond $10/bottle. If there is a parallel, what is the equivalent for wine of the art gallery?

IKEA posters, i would guess?

http://www.ikea.com/us/en/catalog/categories/departments/dec...

I mean the other way around; expensive art is to galleries as expensive wine is to ___ ?

I'm not interested in the art equivalent to "Two Buck Chuck" - I bought several of those pieces of art myself. :)

Wineries. Every winery has a story about how their wine is special and blah blah blah.

It all just tastes like wine.

That doesn't sound right. I mean, each artist also has a description of why their work is special, so I think 'artist' and 'winery' are the most direct analogies.

Galleries seem to play a different role. Is it filled by the sommelier? Famous sommeliers? Wine reviewers? Something else? How do people learn to identify the consensus determined expensive brand?

Most of me can't even fathom the inclination to waste that kind of money on something purely aesthetic. But a part of me feels like if you can separate a fool from his money, then you deserve every penny you get.

It's not just something "purely aesthetic". It's something aesthetic that you also hope to be able to sell for a profit in the future.

The article says that cachet is also important. It might be more useful to your status to host a party where you serve $10,000/bottle wine, instead of selling it in the future.

The only reason anybody pays 100k for a bottle of wine is because the are reasonably convinced they can sell it for more than 100k in the not too distant future. Wine at that level is a pure investment instrument.

I'd also ask if there are parallels to caviar, or most other luxury goods. Though caviar might have a demand-supply reason for being so expensive.

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