Extremely expensive wines

At what price point does purchasing a bottle of wine for consumption become absurd?

How much money do you have?

It’s all relative…

The answer, by definition.
No money, no wine. Add dollars, add wine.

Yup. How much money are you willing to pay for a night in a fancy hotel? For a meal at a fancy restaurant? For a fancy car (many of which depreciate like crazy)? My answers to these questions have all increased sharply with my disposable income… although I’m still not a fan of overly expensive cars.

Most highly expensive cars share key components with much cheaper cars. Branding earns luxury price premia.

What do you think??

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It becomes absurd when the cost does not equate to a significant increase in the quality of the wine over similar wines of lower cost. No DRC, Petrus, or Screaming Eagle for me.

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Once again Highly Expensive and Moderately Expensive are relative and need to be defined. In my world I would agree with you for Moderately Expensive cars, but not for Highly Expensive models. I don’t put Lexus, Infiniti, Acura, Cadillac, Audi, or Genesis as Highly Expensive.

You can see where this is going. The same a s wine.

If more than 2% of annual income, or 1% of net wealth.

Depends on what one defines as highly expensive. See OP. [wow.gif]

Over the years my price of absurdity (750ml for personal consumption) has increased from $50 to $100 to $150. Having accumulated a comfortably sized cellar, there’s relatively little impetus to buy wines other than for regular consumption and they’re almost always priced < $75/bottle (usually $10 - $40).

There’s more to it. Consuming very rare or exceptional wines, especially among appreciative friends or in unique settings, can elevate the experience. Wines purchased for these special occasions are usually absurdly priced…i.e.: hundreds to thousands. The specific wines and number of occasions are correlated to wealth and disposable income. Personally, I’ve never spent more than $500/bottle, but I wouldn’t rule it out. The experiences can be profound. And there are definitely risks, especially if the wines have any appreciable age. There are plenty of corked and unsound trophies. An unknown number are fraudulent.

I’ve spent a lot of years learning the limitations of my own tasting abilities…and unfortunately, they’ll continue to slowly decline. I can be very happy consuming wines currently priced $10 - $75. But on special occasions, trophies can be well worth it.

RT

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There are many things that might make a wine too expensive ($50 for one type of wine might be a bargain and an obscene price for another), but I always consider a wine to be too expensive when I would be more concerned about it being flawed or underwhelming than excited about it being delicious. To be “worth it,” to me, a truly expensive wine has to provide a unique, memorable experience. If it is just “nice,” I spend the night in a funk because I wasn’t transported. The same experience from a moderately priced bottle makes me nothing but happy.

I try to have a max of 600$ per bottle. Seems expensive, but got to have a stopping point somewhere. The most expensive bottles I buy are the promontory bottles on the founders list, 600$ vs 800$ at release.

For me, this is not about how much I can afford. I can afford to drink DRC but I don’t (however, if you want to serve it I will gladly drink it). We love our wine, but at the end of the day it is a beverage. I will say that again…it is a beverage. So, my personal limit before it becomes absurd is $400, although I still feel like a bit of a jerk somehow for spending that much on a bottle of wine. A question that helps to determine that $400 limit for me is: “How much better is a good Petrus than a good Chateau Pavie?” Is it six times better?

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Somewhat arbitrary. I could imagine people living in hovels but spending 30-40% of their income on high income juice.
Everything’s relative and people do crazy things to support their habits.

Jonathan put it very well:

"There are some wines where I’d rather have that much more money in my bank account than I would the wine in my cellar or glass.

On the other hand, there are certain wines that I can’t believe I can get for mere money."

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Entirely! [wow.gif]

Yes

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