Wall Street Journal - July 2008

Cultivating a Taste for Inexpensive Wine

My friend Jonathan brought my attention to this article recently posted in the Wall Street Journal. The author discusses the wine markup in restaurants, whether or not it is worth it, and how studies have found that the majority of people can not tell the difference between regular and reserve bottles of the same wine (reserve being made with the best grapes of the crop).

In response to that, I agree with much of what the author says, except that he doesn’t acknowledge that one can acquire a taste for better wine...and genuinely appreciate it. Take caviar as an analogy. Not that I can afford top-shelf caviar on a regular basis, but after having it maybe 20 times in my life now, I definitely can tell – and appreciate – the difference between cheap salmon eggs and high-quality sturgeon. Same with wine, I’m not just imagining the improved appreciation that I have for quality wine. For me, it tops out in the $150/bottle range, meaning anything above that is hard for me to justify in a price/quality way, but the difference between cheap mass-produced wine and a quality hand-crafted wine – whoa boy, I get goosebumps thinking about it!

Read article (link to new web page)