Are expensive wines worth your money? In this video I will discuss 5 reasons why wine’s price does not necessarily reflect in its quality. And in the second part of the video I will taste three wines from the same region, but of different price categories.
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**CONTENTS OF THIS VIDEO:
0:00 Introduction
0:40 Let Me Tell You a Story…
2:26 What Affects The Price of Wine?
3:48 5 Reasons Why Price Does Not Equal Quality
3:51 Reason 1
4:30 Reason 2
5:16 Reason 3
6:01 Reason 4
6:41 Reason 5
7:35 The Tasting
12:05 The Reveal
#wineeducation #Brunellodimontalcino #wine
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27 Comments
Expensive does not equal Quality. Period ! But cheap wines can be worse than simple sparkling water. I look for value. segment. good Quality, affordable price.
Price does reflect quality most of the time but quality does not go up in a fair proportionate way. Someone will pay extra $400 for 5 more points and someone will not.
The way I see it is that price contains a mix of quality, opportunity, logistics (incl. taxation), marketing and technical involvement, both in technical difficulty
mostly viticulturallyand in optional processes -mostly in winemaking-. Since the last two tend to correlate with quality, the overall implicit effect of quality in price is somewhat more relevant than the other factors. It still doesn't add up to an overwhelming majority, and personal taste is also a huge external factor, but overall there's an observable correlation between price and quality. The key thing I take from this is that quality doesn't determine price to a great extent on its own, but it is generally more impactful than any other isolated factor.Love the t shirt
So true ! Prices of Grand Cru burgundies (Bonnes Mares, Clos de la Roche, Clos St Denis etc) have become very irrational.
In my opinion, the blind test was way too easy because all three wines were from the same region of Tuscany, all made 100% out of the same grape variety – Sangiovese, which ripens best in Montalcino.
The difference between these wines is to a lesser degree type of aging, and mostly the length of aging. Of course that a grape varietal with such high acidity and subdued tannins, will need longer aging to balance those flavors out.
It would still be easy, but definitely harder than this, to for example do a blind test between Brunello, Chianti Classico which can be blended up to 20% – mostly with Cabernet Sauvignon, and something from the Chianti region but outside of the black rooster municipality borders, where even more than 20% blends are allowed.
It's not only about the type of grape either, but different terroir.
Just a friendly suggestion, no offense.
Otherwise, I do like your conclusion in the end because in my experience, it does reflect reality
The only exception would be expensive celebrity labels, like Snoop Dogg having a wine label now, with the wine of course being 👎.
The winemakers from these traditional areas are to this day hard working, passionate people obsessed with wine, but farmers first and foremost. Vineyard is where it's at, at least 80% of winemaking. 🙂
I'm not a sommelier but I've tasted (and spit) over 1,000 wines in my life. My theory is that if you can find an excellent $25 wine, buy it in volume. If you taste a $100 wine next to a $25 you will probably prefer the more expensive one. If you taste one on Tuesday and the other on Thursday one at a time, you will probably not taste the difference. Save money. Enjoy a $25-$35 bottle.
I like your take away: Sometimes price maybe reflects quality 😄
2015 to my palate was under-rated by the critics. They continue to amaze (the wines that is).
In our wine club we serve 1/3 of the bottles under $30, 1/3 under $80, and 1/3 we blow the wad to equal $100Xmembers present. So some of the bottles we have served cost $500 or more.
Only two ever won the night… a Penfield Grange, and a Château Lafite Rothschild. Usually a wine under $30 is the winner. Nice to see you publish something to confirm our findings.
In Australia, the crap wine starts from $20 thanks to plenty of taxes
Expensive wine is magical. It can turn money into urine.
That said, it can please those who can afford it and very often it's just to show off.
The best is the one you like. The next best is the one you like and can afford. Even then I refuse to pay exorbitant prices for "great wine" because its a fleeting pleasure. I'd much rather put my money towards things that last. But to each his own and enjoy the day.
Never tolerate wine snobs. It doesn't matter what the drink or food is… keep yourself open to new experiences but if you like it then enjoy it.
More of these vids!
I love your honesty! You were not afraid to refute your original hypothesis. Like much in the wine world, it all depends on the specific situation and your personal preference. I’ve been stunned by the quality of some village level burgundy and also disappointed by grand crus.
The fact is: quality and price do not necessarily go hand in hand. But the area of production is to be taken into account. When we consider an area like Bordeaux, for example, where the price is almost solely defined by the Grand Cru level, and where the level dates back to an almost 150 yo definition which was based (guess what?) on the price of the wines at the time, then it's clear that the link can (and often is) broken, with some fourth or fifth growth possibly being much better than second or third ones.
But when we step to less important areas, things start to change: the price of the wine starts to reflect more the work in the vineyard and in the winery, and then the time spent in the cellar. These are things that matter, and will have an effect both on the price AND on the quality. So it doesn't surprise me at all that a 500€ bottle from Montalcino was better than a 100€ one, and much better than a 20€ one. On the other hand, you proved something else you didn't mention: while from 20€ to 100€ the difference in quality is quite remarkable, the difference between 100€ and 500€ is much less appreciable, especially for non-connaisseurs. So… Is it worth spending 500€ for a bottle? Yes, if you care able to appreciate the difference. Otherwise spend 100€, or maybe 50€, and you'll get a wine to remember anyway!
(For the non Euro people… Feel free to change € to $… The concept is the same 😂)
I review wine and I can't begin to tell you just how much I agree with you. I have had more than a few wines that sold for around $30-$40 that just blew the doors off of more expensive wines. Wine is a product and like any other product, marketing is involved, and marketing costs money which in the end, you and I pay for. How many times have we seen a new vintage of a particular wine come out and it is rated super high by a "prestigious" wine magazine only to have the next vintage sell out instantly even though it is not very good? One rating of a label is a lot of times all it takes for the wine label to be recognized as a quality wine when in reality, nothing can be further from the truth. As I said, the next vintage can be just an average wine but people will throw the wines name around as if it is gold. My local wine shop here in "freedom" Florida knows my palate and they warn me not to buy Caymus, Cabernet Sauvignon, to stay away from it. They tell me it is way fruit forward and very much a jam bomb. So many wines live off of their reputation esapecially after they are bought out by big wine conglamorates (Constellation Brands etc;) One last comment I have is that you shouldn't be afraid to name names. You are educating folks about wine, unless you are beholden to one or more of the bad wine producers, you should come out with your feelings on them.
😂 loved your reaction when you picked the 500 bottle. Great video
Blue Chip wines like Chateau Margaux etc. used to be around or often even under 100 dollar a bottle before wine spectator and Robert Parker rating etc. became more well known. In the 80s this insanity simply didn't exist.
Expensive Wine is Lovely
Envy rides people like crazy, and for some a lot is not enough. If they can't have what Mr Croesus is drinking, life sucks. It's a dark and infantile mentality because it means that in a way they'll always be poor.
I love this quote from the film "The Big Short": "Let's get on this quickly too. Because if he's right, every loser with a couple million bucks in a fund is gonna be jumping on this." So there you have it guys, the grass is always greener. Fact of the matter is that never in history has more and better wine been available to the general public. How about counting our blessings?
Nice videos, but just too many ads, I stop watching them.
Nice to see the commentator break their own confirmation bias. I do get the sense that allot of wine critics who talk about price not bring quality have never tasted the expensive wines they complain about. Sadly $100-200 is not that high on the scale. Again, thanks for the honesty at the end.
The 10x issue can be referred to as wanker value for wanky wines. Many of them are great and some are amazing but there are usually better value wines….I’m in Australia and we have ~$250 Shiraz that is far better than a Rhone Syrah at >$1k; or a Farr Cote Pinot for ~$100 that’s better value and similar quality to a Domaine Leroy at >~$10k…then again, the mega wealthy mustn’t care or have a clue; as it’s a significant waste of money – unless it’s for wank value…sometimes it is – I have a selection of wanky wines in my stock. In Australia, U.S. high end wines are comparatively well priced as there’s anti-American bias.
Wow Agnese, that is truly an epic torching of luxury wine industry pricing. I really admire your courage for telling it like it is!!
The price spread here was pretty extreme (20, 100, 500), so there should be discernible differences in quality (and preference). Although then one still needs to decide for themselves what price premium can be tolerated for a better wine experienced. I follow Konstantin Baum's YT channel and he did a similar tasting 2 years ago. I sent him the following story of a group tasting that I conducted in 2018 with novice tasters and 2005 Bordeaux. I'm copying that description below. Sorry for the length.
In 2018, I conducted an experiment with seven 2005 Bordeaux red wines (price range $18-68–CellarTracker Community average cost at the time) and seven, novice wine tasters (I participated, but didn't include my rankings in the results). Wines were tasted in random order and single blind. Also, each wine had at least one professional score of 90+, so no laggards here. Each taster was asked to rank the wines from 1 (favorite) to 7 (least favorite). Then, I performed proper non-parametric statistical tests on the outcome. First result is that the rankings were not random across tasters (p<0.005), so there was good agreement in rankings. This was a surprise for me. Of course, there was considerable discussion among this group of friends around the dinner table during tasting, so tasters might have unintentionally influenced each other. Second, when looking at the correlation between wine ranks by cost and wine ranks by taster preference, it was low (not statistically significant). However, it turns out that in this set of wines, the second most expensive wine was too oaky for all the tasters (including me, I might add), so the average rank for that wine was the lowest of the seven wines. When I removed that oaky wine from the cost-preference correlation analyses, lo and behold, there was strong correlation between wine cost and taster preference (p<0.02). So, eliminating the one outlier (excessively oaky wine), novice taster preference was strongly correlation with wine price. This was even more of a surprise for me than the first result above. Even with this relatively narrow range of wine cost (and quality, all 90+ wines), novice tasters preferred the more expensive wines. Incidentally, when we finished that oaky wine a couple nights later (stored in fridge on argon), the oak had integrated and it was quite delicious.
'Promosm' 🤣
Maybe the next test can be tasting the difference between wines ranging from €15-50. That's a nice price point for most of us as we want wines we don't feel too guilty drinking on a Tuesday night. I come from South Africa and now I live in Norway. So for the first time I have access to old world wines such as Chianti, Barbaresco, Rioja etc and I want to explore these wines without breaking my bank. I think there are lots of others out there also looking for ultimate bargains and quality entry level recommendations from an expert we trust.