For Tex: Retailers, tell us how cheap rich folk can be...

See here for context: http://www.wineberserkers.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=1458374#p1458374

There is a motion on the table that folks with money don’t buy good value wines or even dead cheap plonk from time to time, what say ye?

It’s like anything else, you can’t generalize that broadly. I can say it’s true for my uncle. I loaded him up from 1997-2004, and he’s enjoying drinking all the aged CA & Bdx that are now worth $$$ but he only paid $40-100 retail for back in the day. Now, he only buys $50ish and up CA Chards & White Burgs and some occasional similarly priced aged Spanish or red Burgs to augment what he has and fill in holes. He probably consumes a bottle a week, maybe 40 bottles a year. My aunt will only have an occasional glass with dinner and they serve out some extras when guests come over. He doesn’t see any point in buying ‘cheap’ wines when he has more than enough to last him already on top of his other occasional purchases.

My in-laws are wealthy but not dripping rich. My MiL drinks whatever gallon of cheap Sauvignon Blanc that she can find and always insists on dropping a couple of ice cubes in her glass. My FiL drinks Milwaukee’s Best and Virginia Gentleman bourbon. It’s all about what is cheapest. They consistently make fun of me for being willing to spend $10 on a six-pack of beer.

But I think that it’s more a Southern thing than a cheapo thing. I’ve been to several high end weddings throughout the South where the beer option was Bud or Bud Light and the wine was utter plonk. The liquor is usually a step up, but not always.

My mother told the story of how my great-uncle (a very successful doctor and a great guy) would refuse to buy or drink wine that cost more than $2 a bottle. His reasoning was - what if I try it and it turns out I like it? I’ll end up spending too much money on wine.

I can’t say he was wrong…

I don’t think Roberto’s post was meant to make a joke of rich people who won’t care about wine and therefore drink cheap stuff, instead the guy who pulls up in a Bentley and tried to haggle a $12 bottle down to $10.

And then doesn’t want to pay sales tax or for shipping / delivery!

My dad was friends with an old farmer who sold his 10+ acres of land in Mountain View in the late 70’s for a couple of million. He bought a new Cadillac every couple of years but kept on drinking his jugs of Carlo Rossi Paisano to the end.

And that’s why he can afford a Bentley.

Exactly my point. A lot of folks with money consider cars and houses very differently than they do “consumables” like wine.

Very much so. I walk a lot of cases of cheap wine out for people who have Porsche SUVs and the like.

No question I could buy a Bentley for what I have spent on wine over the years - but that would have been a terrible trade off, leaving my life greatly impoverished.

I’m sure we all know wealthy people who are obsessed with “saving” money.

Every day I serve (very small Pinot samples) on the Healdsburg Square people where they walk out of $100 lunches, who swear they’d never spend $50 on a bottle of wine, and I’ll split it and pay the tasting fee, thank you very much!

It’s been my experience that they tend not to be very joyful folk.

Wasn’t there an interminable thread on “Frugality” and “Happiness” a few years back? Whenever I saw it I used to think that one route to happiness must be indulging one’s OCD. :slight_smile:

My mother in law who lives in what most Americans would consider poverty and not far from a large Favela in Rio de Janeiro is the happiest person I know. She is a self employed seamstress with lots of work and is surrounded by worshipful children and grandchildren at all times.

The average high net worth individual I come into contact with not so much on the happy front.

And probably some expensive cases out to decade(s) old Chevy Blazers, Dodge Neons, and Ford Focuses!

Brent is correct, you can’t generalize. It’s about what you value. Wine is a luxury item. People pick and choose what they spend money on cuz money is usually finite for almost everyone. What one considers good value for the money someone else will consider a complete waste of money. Cars, hotels, consumer electronics, appliances, first class plane tix, sporting events, etc. People will pay for what they consider good value for their hard earned money. Sometimes, it’s not wine they wanna spend it on.

^This.

I can rationalize spending what some people (like my family) consider ridiculous money on a great bottle of wine; I can’t rationalize spending $$$ on a hotel room that I’m only going to use for sleeping at night.

Bruce

There’s no doubt there are plenty of rich ass people out there who are cheap as hell in all manners of life. Not sure why we need to further discuss something as obvious as the sky is blue other than Roberto wanting to prove a point against Bill.

Really can’t generalize about who buys what, but I’ve had some interesting customers over the years here in Austin.

One guy, youngish-looking when I first started selling him wine, wore trashed clothes, combed his hair whether it needed it or not (once a week? Maybe?) and shaved occasionally, wore zoris till the ball of his big toe wore through the sole, yet never spent less than 5 or 6K on a large rollout stack of very good to great Bordeaux and Burgundy, Champagne and Germans. Regularly. He’d sold his IT company for mid 9 figures around 01 or 02.

Older gentleman (in the original sense of the word) just a few years younger than a depression kid, loved wine, had a great palate that he swore he didn’t possess, wouldn’t bat an eye spending a couple hundred on a bottle at a restaurant when he paid the check when he was treating you, but wouldn’t spend more than 20 bucks EVER on a bottle for home use, as he swore he couldn’t tell the difference. Believe me, he could; I sandbagged him too many times when we invited him over to our digs for dinner occasionally. He sold his oil & gas company for millions when he retired. You know that big cattle ranch that Nolan Ryan purchased several years ago outside of Gonzales Texas? That was the small (smallest) piece of his ranch; none of his 3 kids wanted that section as it was the crummy part of the ranch and the only section with no water of its own.

And then, as always, one of our favorite customers, wears 6-10k Brionis and Zegnas, sports the diamond encrusted solid gold Rolex, drives the disgustingly expensive Turbo-ridiculoso, and bitches me out every time we close a sale to him on a few cases of La Crema chard telling me that for all the business he does with me (Waaay down the list in $$, of course) I need to be giving him at LEAST a 20% discount. He gets 15% off the case like everyone else; my full markup is 1.4 x cost. Him, I could do without.

'Twas ever thus…