Price and Quality
“It is one of the ironies of the wine market today that just as the price differential between the cheapest and most expensive bottles is greater than ever, the difference in quality is probably narrower than it has ever been. There is good and bad quality at every price level.” –Jancis Robinson, How to Taste
Doesn’t a $400 bottle of wine have to be better than a $30 bottle of wine? Not necessarily. A wine can disappoint (or surprise) you at any price, whether it’s $4, $40, $400 or more. While many great wines are very expensive today, in my opinion, not many of these expensive wines are really worth their price tag.
At Thanksgiving dinner a few years ago, Mom surprised us with a 1996 Chateau Lafite Rothschild (French Bordeaux) that set her back $400, just so that we could see what a so-called “perfect” bottle of wine rated 100 points by the experts tasted like. Now I’ll have to admit, it was a very good bottle of wine. But was it worth $400 or anything close to that price? Probably not.
In fact, later during dinner, we took the remaining half bottle of the Lafite and blind tasted it against a 2000 Columbia Crest Walter Clore Private Reserve (Bordeaux-type blend from Washington). Walter Clore is widely available at about $30 per bottle. In our blind tasting, two of the four of us preferred Lafite and the other two chose Walter Clore as their favorite.
Now if it’s worth the $370 difference for you to say you drank a Lafite, fine, but we’d rather have a case of Walter Clore for the same money ourselves.
While we’re on the subject of $400 wines, in May 2006, there was a thirtieth anniversary re-tasting of the wines from the famous 1976 Judgment of Paris Tasting, the event that really put American wines, and California wines in particular, on the map. The tasting in 1976 pitted some of California’s best wines against top French wines, and the American wines won. It was one of the pivotal events in the history of wine, not so much because the Americans won but because the experts who tasted the wines could not tell which wines came from which country in the blind tasting.
In the 2006 re-tasting, it was generally thought that the French wines would have aged better and would certainly win this time. But the American wines won again. In fact, the California Cabernets swept the first five places this time around.
The point is not that French wines are no longer that good; in fact, they are probably better than ever. The point is that there are outstanding wines made today almost all over the world, and you don’t have to pay $400 per bottle (or even more in the case of many 2005 Bordeaux) to find one.
“I don’t think there’s anything rational, or sane, about paying $750 to $1,000 a bottle for any wine. That’s one reason I stopped buying Bordeaux a few years ago. It simply became too expensive for my taste…The same market that gives us scary Bordeaux prices offers us values as well, increasingly from around the world. You just have to pay attention, strike when the opportunity presents itself, and be prepared to walk away from loved ones that become too expensive.” –James Laube, Senior Editor, Wine Spectator

While virtually every wine lover is familiar with Syrah from the Rhone Valley in France and Shiraz [sha-RAZZ] from Australia, I am more and more impressed with the quality of Shiraz/Syrah from areas not traditionally known for this grape, such as Washington and California in the United States as well as Chile and South Africa. It is beginning to look like Shiraz/Syrah might become the new Cabernet Sauvignon; a grape that dominates some regions but also makes good wine almost everywhere it is grown.
Today marks the second “virtual meeting” of the
While I found this book to be a good read, it is not for everyone. If you are interested in learning more about Bordeaux, the people, places, and history, this could be a book for you, and you can head over to
We followed the same format as last time for the tasting. All four of us Wine Peeps got together one afternoon, put all 13 bottles out on the table and tasted them one-by-one, discussing them as we went.
When we set our minds to something, we go for it and usually don’t waste much time (I’m sure this is not news to those who know us personally). And so it was with the Wine Century Club. We went online to
French wines made predominately with Cabernet Franc can be found in a number of different regions. However, the most well-known are
Our 59th wine tasting dinner on Friday evening was one of our best ever. We enjoyed the evening with wonderful friends,
As the program title suggests, during this course we tasted six unique wines from around the world. While many of us have our regular go-to varietals (Shiraz/Syrah, Cabernet Sauvignon, Sauvignon Blanc, etc.), this course was a fun opportunity to experiment a little and try some wines that we had never tasted before. I had only had two of them (Albariño and Amarone della Valpolicella) previously so four were completely new to me.
We found visiting
Now, in which of those environments do you feel an obligation to buy? For me, the easy answer is Australia. Even though I am not able to visit Australia frequently, the positive experience that we had there, not to mention the fact that they produce outstanding wines at reasonable prices, makes me want to buy their wines and encourage you to do so also.
This blog is for busy people who enjoy wine and want to be savvy wine consumers, but who do not have the time or inclination to do the research themselves. We want to be your Wine Peeps. As a regular reader of this blog, we hope that you will learn everything you need to know about selecting, tasting, and enjoying good wine. You’ll be able to impress your friends with your knowledge of wine. 