Why expensive wine doesn’t always offer more pleasure
I’ve long been a critic who agrees that expensive wine isn’t always or necessarily better than inexpensive wine. This conclusion is based, not solely on common sense, but on experience. It’s a topic that’s of interest to people because, after all, we’re all limited in how much we can spend on stuff (especially a discretionary item like wine, although I realize that for some people wine isn’t discretionary but mandatory, and I’m one of them). You can’t blame anyone who likes a $12 wine for wondering what they’re missing in a $120 bottle.
Well, I’ve tried to wrestle with this concept for a long time, and here I go again. This video quotes a “Princeton economist” on the topic of expensive wine to this effect: “there is an unhappy marriage between a subject that especially lends itself to bullshit and bullshit artists who are impelled to comment on it. I fear that wine is one of those instances where this unholy union is in effect.” This quote leads the article’s author to opine that “layered onto [objective qualities] is a mountain of subjective opinions, people trying to prove their sophistication, and a whole lot of marketing. The nature of wine makes it really hard to tell the difference between expertise, nonsense, and personal preference.”
The writer strongly implies that “subjective opinions” are irrelevant in wine appreciation—that they distort the wine experience so much that the drinker is hopelessly misled by her own feelings about the wine, which have nothing to do with its objective qualities.
Nothing could be further from the truth.
Yes, it’s true that a very expensive wine might not be objectively better than an affordable one, in the same way that, say, a Jackson Pollock splatter painting may seem to be nothing more than the dribbles of a child. However, the art market doesn’t view things that way, and neither do I. Having tasted a gazillion wines in my career, here’s what always gets overlooked in claims that there’s no difference between amateur and high art beside subjectivity: People don’t drink wine simply for its objective quality. Or, to put it another way, wine is one of those life experiences that can’t be reduced to simplistic analyses.
The best way to appreciate the truth of this statement is to think about your own life and the things you love. It may be a partner, or kids, or a job or hobby, a favorite sweater or hoodie, a café, a dog, a plant in your yard, a house in your neighborhood. There’s something about it that turns you on. You don’t look at it objectively, you look at it in terms of how it makes you feel. And feelings, I would argue, trump objective qualities every time.
In terms of expensive wine, people buy it because of the way it makes them feel. And there’s nothing wrong with that. In fact, the wonderful thing about wine always has been that it makes us feel better about ourselves, the people we’re with, and the world. Even after all these years of tasting and reviewing wine, I still get excited when I pop certain bottles. I suppose that means I’m biased in favor of liking them, but it could also result in disappointment, if a highly-anticipated bottle disappoints. But that’s beside the point. The point is, my emotional pleasure in drinking certain wines is at least as important to me as the external, objective qualities of the wine.
So it’s rather mean-spirited for people to point to these laboratory studies as “proof” that “expensive wine is for suckers.” That is a very cynical, naïve way of looking at things. It disregards romance, love, intuition and creativity, which are the true wellsprings of pleasure. It disregards how what we eat, drink and experience adds pleasure to our lives—and who is anyone to dictate to me what pleasure means?
It seems to me that these writers who are constantly trying to disparage expensive wine are missing the point. Perhaps they’re not really wine lovers. The love of wine is impossible to define: It’s irrational. It has nothing to do with blind tasting and everything to do with emotions that get us swept up into the moment. As a former critic, I do agree that wine reviews ought to be conducted blind and thus objectively, but as a wine consumer I understand the objections to this rule. I’m caught between the two extremes. Look, the writer in the piece I referred to talks about how a white wine that was dyed red “can dominate wine students’ sense of smell” in a laboratory study. Well, sure, that’s always a possibility. But what does that have to do with the love of wine—with the way it makes you feel? Nothing. It’s like reducing human behavior to that of a rat running through a maze. Don’t we feel we’re more than that?
[Preface: With apologies to Jack Paar who quipped: “As I was saying before I was interrupted …” Overcoming a technical snafu uploading comments to this blog]
“So it’s rather mean-spirited for people to point to these laboratory studies as ‘proof’ that ‘expensive wine is for suckers.’ That is a very cynical, naïve way of looking at things.”
Let me amend that declaration to read: “Over-priced wine is for suckers.”
Never overlook the existence of these goods:
Veblen goods
[Wikipedia excerpt: “Some types of luxury goods, such as high-end wines, designer handbags, and luxury cars, are Veblen goods, in that decreasing their prices decreases people’s preference for buying them because they are no longer perceived as exclusive or high-status products.”]
Giffen goods
[Wikipedia excerpt: “Some types of premium goods (such as expensive French wines, or celebrity-endorsed perfumes) are sometimes claimed to be Giffen goods. It is claimed that lowering the price of these high status goods can decrease demand because they are no longer perceived as exclusive or high status products.”]