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Comment by twangist | Hacker News Reader

This seems like a flawed approach. These days, $8 bottles are a mass-produced affairs, generally full of additives for body, color, 'legs', and other attributes. They're very consistent affairs, as consistent as Bic pens or Cheetos. They are not charmingly rustic bottles from small struggling vintners.

(Not sure where you live, but in major US cities $8 will get you only the most mass-market stuff - Frontera, Yellow Tail, etc.)

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> generally full of additives for body, color, 'legs', and other attributes

Is this true? Here in New Zealand a NZ$10 (US$7) bottle will be just wine unless it is sparkling. The difference between cheap and expensive is that cheap wine is usually a blend of different wines to achieve some specific flavour profile which theoretically means a more generic flavour since it will average out the specific regional and micro-regional flavours.

Here in New Zealand a NZ$10 (US$7) bottle will be just wine unless it is sparkling.

Virtually no wine is 'just wine', especially at the lower price points. All winemakers add at least some additives and preservatives to help with the vinification process and to stabilize the wine. There are probably 30+ chemicals approved adding to wine and I can promise you that a NZ$10 of wine has several of them.

What we think of as "just wine" isn't "natural wine". Yes, all wine has additives - but it's not artificial flaviourings etc.

This just isn’t true: I’m in SoCal, and you can get a very good bottle of wine at Trader Joe’s for $8 (TJ store label), but there’s no guarantee that buying another bottle with the same label tastes as good.

So you buy the $8 wine and the $30 wine. Since it's almost certain all the wine from the same batch is going to be similar quality. If you get a good $8 bottle you go back the next day and buy a couple cases of the good/ cheap stuff. If the cheap stuff is not-so-good, drink the $30 wine and use the cheap stuff to cook with.

This way you are guaranteed good wine.

But that is probably because "TJ store label" isn't a wine maker. They probably just buy whatever wine they can get for cheap and put their name on it. What you are experience isn't inconsistencies in the wine making process, but inconsistencies in TJ's wine procurement process.

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