Comment by aneth | Hacker News Reader

Comment by aneth | Hacker News Reader

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I'm sorry, two buck chuck tastes terrible to me. I'm not the kind of person who sits around debating the merits of various wines, but I do like wine and I am somewhat picky. I can't finish a glass of two buck chuck, whether I knew what it was beforehand or not - and both situations happen all the time at parties.

I've read this type of study several times - either I have especially sensitive taste or there is something wrong with the studies because it is simply not true that there is no correlation between taste and price.

Can I tell the difference between a $15 bottle and a $40 bottle? No, I don't taste price. Are as many $15 bottles excellent as $40 bottles? Absolutely not.

One flaw: if you pick a random $40 bottle and a random $15 bottle and ask someone which they like, this is not a valid study. You need to pick a wine that both costs $40 AND IS WORTH $40 and likewise a wine that's WORTH $15. Just because a wine is $90 doesn't mean it's great, but if a wine is $2 it probably sucks.

The correlation is there and pretty strong, particularly when moving from $2 to $8 to $15, but it is not perfect. Price != taste.

How do you evaluate "worth"? If you say the worth of wine is based on the taste then of course wine that is worth more will taste better.

Get someone who can tell the difference between a good $40 bottle and an overpriced $10 bottle with a $40 label, have them pick a wine they think is worth $40 and one worth $10, then do the study.

This would prove something closer to "some wines taste better than others", a statement which is not disputed. (E.g. the results of wine tasting contests are not nearly random.)

What does the current study prove? Some wines cost more?

What needs to be studied is if there is a correlation between price amd consumer preference. As far as I can tell, this was not an effort to do that, but rather to prove the obvious: you can't taste price. This is true for any kind of food.

Can you look at two pieces of art and tell which is ore expensive? No. Is better art more expensive? Sometimes, usually yes, and often eventually. Same can be said for wine. Price is a product of demand, demand depends on information and information distribution. Both products are small batch and highly personal, so price quality correlations will be less accurate and change over time.

Art is usually unique; I'm not sure the markets are comparable (wines have a limited run, but not so limited that two true fans will push the price into the millions.)

This study shows that some/many wines cost more, yet don't taste better. In other words, a random expensive wine is likely not great from a price-quality, or even just quality, perspective. This is relevant to the unsophisticated buyer, i.e. most of their readers.

I think you're arguing that, essentially, a well-chosen expensive wine is noticeably better than a similarly well-chosen not-so-expensive wine. I'm inclined to believe you, but that is much harder for the average consumer to act on.

Yes, that's basically my point. I also think, on average, a higher price wine will be better than a lower price wine.

A lot of these arguments could be made for any product or service. If you pay more for your house, does it mean that you will live happier? No. You may be much happier in central Montana than New York. If you pay more for your clothes, do they look better? If you pay more for your music, do you enjoy it more?

The whole debate is non-sense. Any consumer who thought they were necessarily getting better wine simply because they paid more probably is not literate enough to have understood this article.

> I also think, on average, a higher price wine will be better than a lower price wine.

You'd expect that, yes, but this article and similar studies strongly suggest that this is not actually true (at the high end, at least). That's the entire point.

I find 2 buck chuck to be thin and metallic, which is a common trait I find in the $5 and under range. (I say, based on WA state TJ prices). There are some decent bottles in this range, their (TJ's) Gypsy is pretty good for cheap plonk right now, and their Porto Morgado isn't bad for the price. But Warre's Warrior at $16 is a ton better (Not to mention Yalumba Old Vine Tawny). The local grocer has an entirely reasonable cheap ass wine for cooking or sangria or other adulteration, Double Dog Dare, at $3/per.

On the other hand, you can get some really good (and some merely questionable, like the Mendecino County Pinot Noir) stuff around the $10 range from Castle Rock, who bottles other peoples excess product and sells it under their own name.

The real reason to buy a $45-95 wine is so that is has the structure to withstand 10-15 years in the cellar to blow your taste buds out the back of your neck when you finally get around to drinking it.

If you've never done it go, just once, to a high end French restaurant order lite and spend $300-400 on a bottle of wine. You'll remember the taste for years and top down is a much better strategy for building an appreciation for wine then starting with two-buck-chuck and working your way up.

The thesis of the article (and I agree with it) - that any half decent bottle of wine will likely taste the same as that $400 bottle of wine.

Indeed - it's the knowledge that the bottle costs $400 which in fact makes it taste so good.

I would agree that the bottle has to start off tasting good (Let's say, Wine Advocate and Wine Spectator rating of 95 or greater) - but I've been to a lot of taste-testings, with people with much, much more refined palets than mine, and we've never had more than random predictability of discerning the difference between a $15, $30, $60 or $90 bottle of wine.

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