"When Are High Wine Prices Justified?"

Over at the Freakonomics blog Robin Goldstein responds to criticism from some guy I've never heard of, and manages to touch off a minor blogstorm of an intensity that is usually reserved on the internet for arguments as to to whether Batman could beat Spiderman in a fight. In fact I fully expect Godwin's Law to be invoked at any moment. In this case, naturally, it is all about wine.

Along with Alexis Hershkowitsch, Goldstein wrote a book called "The Wine Trials of 2010" that are about a series of blind tastings which in Goldstein's words shows that, "...most everyday wine drinkers (not wine professionals) don't prefer more expensive wines to the cheaper wines in blind tastings." Well. Speaking as a very low level fairly unsophisticated but still technically professional wine professional, all I can say is ...NO KIDDING. These inexpensive mass-market wines are designed to appeal to everyday wine drinkers and they do a very good job of it. The reason I don't drink these wines is not because they are bad......they're not bad, in fact they're pretty good. The reason I don't drink them is because the are boring.

Let me illustrate this with a completely unrelated art form and a not so unrelated business...radio. The way highly over paid executive radio weasels decide what songs get airplay is by doing telephone surveys where they play snippets of songs that they ask people to rate from 1 to 10. Now if you were the naive sort you would guess that songs that get the most 10's would also get the most airplay and you would be wrong. the problem with songs that get the most 10's is they also get the most 1's. Interesting music creates strong reactions, both positive and negative. For very person who says, "Wow, I've never heard anything like that. It's brilliant!" There is one person who says, "Wow, I've never heard anything like that. It's stupid!" and then they turn the station. Which as you might guess is bad for ratings. It turns out people can agree on 5's. Nobody turns the station because the music is...okay.

That is what these big wine companies are doing. They are trying to create wines that don't offend anyone. They want to make wines that taste just like the wines you've had a hundred times before and didn't dislike.

Wine is an acquired taste. Good wine, doubly so.