21 January 2008: Do Wine Price Indicate Quality?

Last night I went over to join some friends for a beef brisket dinner. As I entered the room, so too entered my friend Scott, holding 2 half-filled bottles of one and one new bottle. Not recognizing the new bottle, I asked if I could see it: 3 Howling Dogs Merlot. Hmm. . . . I approached the black bottle with the howling dogs label to read the description on the back. As I did so, my friend Scott delightfully told me that he had purchased it on sale for $2.50. Immediately I turned to him and asked what the original price was. In my experience, price normally does not matter, unless it is less than $7.50. Then the wine does not always taste good.

Why is that the case? I lived in San Francisco and was able to go wine tasting frequently. However, my first experience of wine was at my grandparents home. Wine was always the adult drink. It was something that was consumed while having deep discussions. However, as an adult, I realize that the wine my grandmother purchases is always the cheap wine. The expense of the wine neither diminishes the quality of the conversation nor the quality of the company.

As an adult, wine became something more. It was no longer an accessory to a conversation but the subject of the conversation. I first went wine tasting at a professor's home my senior year of college. We were doing a blind tastetest of Woodbridge vs. Robert Mondavi's premium label. At that time, we were unable to tell the difference between price points. Later, when I first went wine tasting in Sonoma at Robert Mondavi vineyard with my friend Kathleen. I asked multiple pourers exactly how to wine taste, exploring the taste with my palet. Wine was intellectual. It required thought in order to fully appreciate it. That intellectual aspect led me to believe in its sophistication. It also helped me to develop my palet.

However, most people do not have the palet to differentiate between wines. All they see is sophistication. The more sophisticated and intellectual the bottle, the better their perceptions of the wine actually are. Wine is an aspiration that many people have, including students. Therefore, one wants to access it as inexpensively as possible to achieve maximum sophistication at the lowest price and to regain that feeling of community.

When my friend Scott drank the wine, he immediately was taken aback. "There is something wrong with this wine," he claimed. It just doesn't taste right. We all sampled it. No. It was just not good wine. I wonder what our response would have been had we not already known the price?