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Comment by briga | Hacker News Reader

I think it tastes just fine, and from my plebeian uncultured perspective it's just as good as a $20 bottle. Better, even, because you're not paying a huge mark up. I'm half convinced that wine connoisseurs are fooling themselves when they claim that they can tell the difference between cheap and expensive wines.

It also doesn't take an economist to figure out why this product sells well. The only other place I've seen wine this cheap is in Italy.

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Almost anything you find on shelves of your local supermarket is going to be heavily procesed industrial wine. The price itself will determine use of more expensive/time consuming proceses, but at the end they are all just drink products.

If wine is just a drink for you than there is huge amount of good wines for $10 - $15. Nicely done, good products.

For me, huge wine nerd (and also owner/winemaker of small organic winery) the wine is more like a postcard from faraway place and book of poetry at the same time. I am sure I am not going to be able to tell difference between cheap and expensive wines sometimes, but that is not a point. There is a more into wine than primary aromatics if you want to dig deep into into.

I care especially about a wine that has some form and doesn’t leave me with a headache the next day.

There is a lot of work and craft that goes into the 20 euro bottle - especially when it comes from a small producer. It takes years to mature, there is uncertainty in the harvest, good barrels, tanks, cork, etc are expensive, lot's of knowledge and experience are required. A high-quality natural cork alone can cost 1.50$.

For 2 dollars you get industrial mass production. Taste-wise it might be fine for some, but it is unlikely to be sustainable and you definitely miss the fun and artisanal part of wine.

It's similar to small local organic farming vs. industrial farming for a more difficult to produce product.

As a wine "connoisseur" (or "nerd"), price isn't really the interesting factor. The fun part of this hobby for me isn't drinking $200 dollar bottles of wine, it's exploring the huge and changing variety of wine out there, and you can happily spend a life time doing that without spending much over $25 for a bottle. Tasting a $20 bottle of some native Slovenian grape you've never heard of can be every bit as fun and rewarding as drinking a $200 bottle of some 'name brand' wine.

One of the most popular wines at my shop (in CA) is a Slovenian Haložan white blend. People may need to get some coaxing to get it into their glass, but you can't deny flavor and they keep coming back for more- especially as its $16 for a liter bottle.

I've noticed that a higher price tag means I'll be more likely to enjoy something out of a randomly sampled collection. However, to me it doesn't really make the wine that much better.

In other words, if I were in a store with only unfamiliar wine, needing to buy something for a dinner party, I'd probably buy a step above normal.

For normal occasions, there are tons of options in the $10 to $15 price range that I know I like. A $10 bottle I like is always better than a $25 bottle I don't like.

> I'm half convinced that wine connoisseurs are fooling themselves when they claim that they can tell the difference between cheap and expensive wines.

TL;DR Yes, it seems you're right about that.

This has been put to the test many times, usually with comical results. This page[0] has some stories, e.g. :

French researcher Frédéric Brochet "submitted a mid-range Bordeaux in two different bottles, one labeled as a cheap table wine, the other bearing a grand cru etiquette." Tasters described the supposed grand cru as "woody, complex, and round" and the supposed cheap wine as "short, light, and faulty." ...when Brochet served a white wine he received all the usual descriptions: "fresh, dry, honeyed, lively." Later he served the same wine dyed red and received the usual red terms: "intense, spicy, supple, deep."

...little correlation has been found between price and preference, even among wine experts, in tasting settings in which labels and prices have been concealed.

Robert Hodgson, a California vintner...noticed that the results of wine competitions were surprisingly inconsistent. ...[he] approached the organizers of the California State Fair wine competition in 2005 with a proposal. In the course of their routine duties, he would sometimes present the judges with samples from the same bottle three times without their knowledge. The judges were among the top experts in the American wine industry: winemakers, sommeliers, critics and buyers as well as wine consultants and academics. The results were "disturbing"... "Over the years he has shown again and again that even trained, professional palates are terrible at judging wine." ...Hodgson continued to analyze the results of wine competitions across the state and found that the medals awarded for wine excellence "were distributed at random".

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blind_wine_tasting

I think that wine connoisseurs can distinguish between a 2$ wine and a 20$ or more wine. The problem lays in rating two wines in the same price range, in that case preferences become personal tastes because differences are very difficult to assess. When you drink very cheap wine the defects are quite easy to perceive.

https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/connoisseur.png comes to mind ;)

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