That’s nothing compared to the folks who can hear the difference between digital audio on cheap and expensive cables! I heard Sony just marketed audiophile quality SD cards.
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YEP!!!
isn’t it all just very surreal?
I bought a turntable that is driven by a huge O ring, so you don’t get hum from the motor. It was inexpensive and sounds incredible. Also messing with the weights produces a more profound change in sound than even a new cartridge does.
And of course sitting next to my cheap ass Chinese tube amp it looks Sooo awesome. Good sound doesn’t need to be expensive. (And you know that, I am stating the obvious)
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One of my personal favorites is Trader Joe beer. Of course it is actually brewed by Unibroue, which is the best brewer in Canada (sorry, Phillips!), but oddly it is like half the price that their normal, branded stuff (like Maudite…).
The one thing I like about the quality curve of beer when compared to wine is that that it is much more compressed. I have a pending date with some Westvleteren XII, which at 30 dollars a bottle marks the end of a (very) long tail, and a record I hope never to break. Other than that, 90% of the beer I love is around 7 to 13 bucks for a 750mL bottle. Everything else goes on sale eventually.
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Oh, you got a westerleven? I haven’t even seen one for sale.
One of my favorite stories is about a time I was on a business trip with a $75 a day per diem. I went to a hotel, and their beer list was at least 300+ long. I skimmed down, found an ancient bottle of Cantillon, and ordered it with chicken strips.
The total bill? $78. Never gonna see a bottle of 92 cantillon again.
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We served the Trader Joe’s beer in all the varieties once it appeared. I liked it. I don’t drink much anymore so it is just a pleasant memory now . . .
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Classic, decently priced treasure. And easy to find. I’m sure you have it.
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…et La Fin du Monde…
Gotta love their brand names. I’m always reminded of R.E.M. for some reason… “It’s the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine…”
But that’s the trick, isn’t it? Some people do, and wine is one of the ways they express that; the price tag can change their subjective experience as much as the trace compounds we taste. In some sense this is people fooling themselves, but in some sense the one is as real as the other.
I mean, I’m certainly not immune to enjoying authenticity, the assurance that this particular place, stone, coin, painting, or artifact was one I would know from history, though a replica might be the same to all my senses. I assume that’s sort of what happens with wine…it just seems sillier when it becomes so specifically about drinking money.
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Recommended (available on Netflix.)
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One of my brother’s roommates in college owned a winery - his dad bought it for him and his brother when he was 13 years old. Consequently, my brother’s graduation party - to which his roommate’s family brought in truckloads of the family wine - was freakin’ amazing. The roommie told me that when they went to wine tastings they were theoretically supposed to be spitting the stuff out, but of course they didn’t. He said after a a few “tastes” it all tasted good.
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That’s my go to in the summer when I want something cold and inexpensive. Good stuff for the price.
Isn’t it nice if people at least enjoy it?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/southern_counties/4095758.stm
There is plenty of perfectly good cheap wine, the main problem is that it’s hard to get your hands on if you don’t live in a wine producing country because they tend to keep it for local consumption. I’ve lived in the south of France and the Algarve in Portugal and the best bet is to buy boxes of the local wine, very cheap, very drinkable stuff. You can go on tours of the vineyards as well and get great deals. Portuguese wine in general is very good, but they don’t export much of it at all, they don’t really have the volumes to compete on the international market.
What they also need to do is also break stuff out by region.
Clearly, I Napa Cab is not going to be like a Washington state Cab, and nor should it.
As a wine lover (and beer, and whiskey) for over 25 years, it’s best if one really wants to enjoy these things to learn as much as you can, ask questions of people that work at wine shops and understand what it is that you like.
There are SO many great wines in the world, and one does not need to spend “a lot” of money - whatever that means to that particular person - to enjoy them. My wife has a dopey friend that says things like “I would never spend less than 20 dollars on a bottle of wine”. Which means she knows zero about the subject. You can get spectacularly ripped off for 20, and you can get a bargain for 20.
I advise that one go to a dedicated store and avoid a grocery chain for the most part, BevMo at the least.
Trader Joe’s is good, we buy a lot of wine there. ALL Two Buck Chuck is disgusting, though. Not to even be considered for cooking. There are plenty of things to get there for a little more that are not so patently offensive.
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There’s an excellent little farm in Stonehouse, just outside Stroud (forgive me if you’re already aware of this), which back in the day, sold perry for 50p a gallon. It’s about four quid a gallon these days, apparently, but still.
Ugh, isn’t this kind of “unless you’re an expert” nonsense the same kind of anti-intellectual BS that we reject here in most other cases?
If you are an adult who likes dark chocolate, raise your hand.
Most of you didn’t start out liking it. You “trained” yourself to appreciate it in spite of the fact that it has a lot of bitterness.
The only difference between chocolate and wine is that the barrier to entry for dark chocolate is slightly lower.
Training yourself doesn’t mean corrupting yourself, if you’re honest with yourself and you’re aware of the effect that labels can have, it means figuring out what you like so that occasionally, something will put a big smile on your face because it’s surprisingly good (you can never be surprised if you can’t be bothered to have expectations).
So don’t buy expensive wine AT FIRST, be aware of price bias and challenge yourself to identify things without a label. Unless you let yourself lie to yourself, you’ll figure what you like.
All this study demonstrates is that a price is no substitute for an education. It doesn’t mean that once you’ve taken the time to figure out what you like, it won’t be expensive, it probably will.
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I was told that by the time a person can afford a quality audio system they’re too old to tell the difference.
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Breaking down blind tasting by region is essential.
A clarifying example of what happened here would be doing a blind taste test between a 12% imperial stout, a 12% belgian golden strong and a 12% Double IPA. The sum of those ratings won’t tell you which one is worth more money, it’ll only tell you how many people generally prefer IPAs to stouts, even if you repeated it with different examples of the same style.
If you compared a $8 pinot noir from the Willamette Valley against a $20 pinot noir from the same place and repeated the experiment with 50 different wines from the same region at equivalent price points, I guarantee you the more expensive wines will edge out the cheaper ones, even among novice drinkers. If you let me hand pick them, it wouldn’t even be close.
Does that mean that every $20 bottle is better than every $7 bottle? Of course not! $15-$45 is really dangerous pricepoint for wine, there is a ton of garbage floating around and the pain of getting ripped off by bad $30 bottle is much greater than when you find an unsurprising dud for less than $10.
Once you get a bit of an education, what you consider truly spectacular will probably be expensive, but the appreciation you have for vintner who can produce a solid wine inexpensively grows as well.
Come to think of it. That would make an excellent event. 5 stewards pick something expensive that they think is excellent, but approachable, as well as the worst example of the style they can find. The public tastes the flights of two and gives a rating to each. The steward with the widest spread wins.
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Your giving glassware too much credit. Most of that nonsense about different shapes guiding the aroma is from 70’s riedel marketting. Scientifically it has no effect, and people have actually checked. A plastic cup isn’t going to take smell out of it any more than any other cup/glass. The vast majority or odor/smell/nose when we eat or drink come up through the back of our throats, rather than in through our noses.
Afaik the only confirmed effects from glassware are narrower glasses preserving carbonation and people generally preferring thin lipped glassware. And I’ve never met a wine maker who drink wine out of anything but water glasses and coffee mugs.
