Wine for the Masses

Wine for Midus

6 years ago, The Economist had a great article on very expensive wine. Not so much on what makes a wine justify a $100+ price tag, but instead, what purpose the marked-up wine serves to the wine community and to the casual wine folks.

During the mid-1980s and 90s, the south-asian wine economy was on a rocket to the moon. Wine parties were extremely fashionable and they were drinking the big five wines as listed in an 1855 classification of wines (Lafite, Margaux, Latour and Haut-Brion). Mouton-Rothschild, a fifth name, was added in 1973. These were the wines to be seen drinking and others fell the side as prices rose to unprecedented levels.

The American response was to drive prices and demand up. However, when demand had create a vacuum of applicable wines, wineries began to release "rare" wines. The American wineries made smaller batches that they declared were reserve vintages. These were bottled specially and sold at a higher than market price. This was a niche market that was fueled by a worldwide desire for expensive wines at a time that the quality of good and poor wines were becoming closer than they had in the past.

Currently, the notion of fine wines being the most expensive is slowly losing steam. However, reserve batches still exist alongside very good <$20 bottles. The expensive wines still have the possibility of being very bad; especially those wines that are old. A poorly stored 150 year old bottle will most certainly taste like a 150 year old bottle of dirty vinegar or worse. Buyer beware, the party would possibly be better for $20 for wine and $5000+ for entertainment than $20 of cheese with a large quantity of liquid filth.

Posted by Ben at 10/11/2005 07:46:00 PM