I used the word “scam” because it was the word used in the article. I don’t subscribe to the idea at all.
I don’t know about Hermes, but Patek contributed to the pricing premium over retail by deliberately restricting the number of Nautilus being made. It is not a scam, it is of course entirely legal, and I can understand the marketing benefits. Rolex and Audemars the same.
Petrus cannot change its production especially as it has no second wine. But it has changed the way it brings the wine to market, and that has created artificial demand. No waiting list, but higher pricing.
I am in the middle on this. I have had friends ask me “is a $100 bottle really much better than a $10 bottle?” I always answer, yes. But I then explain that QPR is a bit of a curve. In my experience once you go over the $150-200 price range, the quality of wine is so good, that drinking a $200 bottle vs a $2000 bottle is not 10x the pleasure, but instead introduces you to a different profile that you typically won’t find at the $200 range - more nuance.
That said, there absolutely are mind games with wine when it comes to price or even the person who is serving the wine. One example is about 2 years ago at the NYC pizza dinner, I brought a few bottles, one was blind. I kept asking people to try the blind and because most people at the dinner knew me, they were polite and said the wine was “fruity” but good. Maybe they liked it, maybe they didn’t but were only being polite because they assumed I wouldn’t bring shit wine.
This dinner was the first time I met @ToddFrench and he was the only one who accurately called the wine out for what it was, $2 church wine that was awful.
HA! I don’t view it that way. I didn’t make the wine. You were calling out the wine for what it was, and you were 100% right. I think it is important for people to say what they believe when they try a wine.
As someone who makes his living selling folks collections, I found it befuddling as well. But I try and put myself in empathetic mindsets… there is clearly some grieving going on regarding the wine consumption loss and the buying somehow allows him to remain connected to a passion that he held for years.
I also wonder whether there’s a mindset of, having learnt so much about wine to make astute purchases, not letting that insight simply drift away (even though logic says it should be let go)?
I love a good deal as much as anyone, but after a few years buying and consuming wine, I’ve found the obsession with “QPR” to be a little misguided. It’s akin to asking a Notre Dame fan why he would pay $1,700 to sit in the nosebleeds of the National Championship when that money could buy him great seats at 12 regular season games. It’s the same team at the end of the day, right? Your touchdown per dollar ratio is way higher with the latter! But of course, in reality, there’s something special about the former that you can’t easily quantify.
I think the joy of this hobby (obsession) is searching for those special producers, bottles and moments and openly acknowledge that some are worth paying up for (though all the better if they are under-the-radar and inexpensive). Reducing everything to a mathematical equation is the antithesis of why I enjoy wine.
“Expensive” is always subjective. A lot of French people would consider a 10 euro wine to be expensive. But for others, a Bordeaux 1st growth isn’t expensive compared to a unicorn from Burgundy or Napa, for example. I don’t think any wine is really a “scam”, although perhaps Colony Capital-era Lascombes came pretty close to being one.
Like all of you, I have a wine budget which I more or less respect and having tried all the really (for me) expensive Bordeaux, I know I’d rather have a dozen 50 euro wines than one 1st CC, simply because the quality difference isn’t worth the extra cost, so I’m happy with what I’ve got in my cellar.
A scam is what one would label those four calls that showed up on my office phone’s display as “Quickbooks” and where the message left, with a foreign accent or touch to the English being spoken, claimed my annual subscription payment was rejected (and so on).
All, or most, of us here likely spend dollars (Euros, etc.) on bottles of wine to be consumed and enjoyed for the pleasure they might provide. Others, perhaps buy for the pleasure of simply collecting or, even profiting when reselling. Regardless, we are purchasing a product that provides pleasure. And, as noted above, that product comes in all price ranges. Find the range with which you are comfortable, and enjoy. No scam in that.
Wine economics is hardly unique. At the top end of any market (particularly luxury goods markets) pricing goes stratospheric and becomes untethered to a normal price-quality ratio. Just the nature of markets and how rich people spend their money.
But fine wine is no more of a scam than any other luxury/discretionary good that has acquired cultural cache. The notion of quality in wine is not concocted. To the contrary, cultures have placed value on wine—and indeed on good wine—for centuries or millennia. This is not some made-up fad. It’s totally logical that as wine gets rarer and better (under conventional, shared assessments of quality), wine gets more expensive. At some point on the curve, it gets really really expensive. Just like baseball cards or art or fine dining or concert tickets or anything else.
Some people have the means and inclination to spend way more money on wine that most people think is warranted. But that doesn’t make it a scam.
Scam? No, not in any fraudulent way, which is what I understand the word to mean. Unless you’re talking about counterfeits or wines known to be flawed being sold as fine, which is not the point of the article.
Overpriced? Depends on one’s wine budget, the point at which the increasing slope of the quality vs. price curve turns you off, and the point at which one’s palate can no longer detect the incremental increase in quality (assuming there is one).
An article looking for associations or mathematical relationships between scores and prices is an interesting springboard for discussion, but holds little relevance for my palate unless they are my scores and prices at which I can purchase the wines.
Most fashion brands are, to me, scams. People spend way more money than things are worth in order to show off the label and be one of the exclusive club.
