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It's good wine if you like the taste. Also, if a wine tastes less than great, something can be added to make it taste better. Sorry for not answering why some pay a small fortune for highly rated wines. Hope for something more exciting, maybe, and there's plenty of people so wealthy they think $20 or more a bottle is really cheap. We are conditioned all our lives to only buy the best we can afford of any consumer product.
Fine wine comes at a range of prices, depending on the marketplace. The rarest wines--aged red grand cru burgundy from the finest houses--command immense prices because there is a market for them. They are also fine wines that use the world's best fruit and extravagant production processes (aging in oak, old low-yield vines, lengthy aging in bottle before release, etc.). That sort of wine will be different--there will be more layers of flavor, the tannins will smooth out, and the wine should be characteristic of its location. Wine is a lot like food. You can enjoy a fine meal at a michelin-starred restaurant (while paying the corresponding price). You can eat very well at a tavern--a hidden gem. You can eat poorly at McDonald's.
Would these wine experts pass a blind test in knowing which is which? I can't find it now but I recall a situation where someone put the expensive label on a cheap bottle and vice versa and the experts were going on and on about the (actual) $2 bottle of wine and how amazing it was.
I choose it by which will give me a hangover and which one won't.
The really cheap stuff will kill you the next day.
You can get a decent bottle for around $9-10
Bought two bottles of Marchetti Red Wine (90% Montepulciano, 10% Sangiovese) the other day. Think I paid $6 for it, probably because the bottle was attractive. Had it today with brisket.
It's nothing special. Oh, it would be a decent respite after a hot day somewhere and it now being night, but it's nothing special, hardly worth the $6/bottle I paid for it. A cheaper Rex Goliath, Texas Ste. Genevieve, or Lindemans would be more entertaining.
HOWEVER, I suppose it does have its purposes. Only had 2 or so glasses of it, saved the rest for another day.
I had my wine drinking years and NEVER bought that 2buck chuck rot gut wine but people would carry out cases from Trader Joe's.
A nice smooth wine would be about $7-10 in the days I imbibed...would love to buy organic wine from whole foods when I felt rich.
I was in outside sales back in the late 70's and my boss was a spender, loved to entertain customers big time and pushed his people to do the same. So one night entertaining a customer and his wife I ordered a bottle of Rothchild for $64. What a brave move and the customer took home the empty bottle as a souviner.
For the last 22 yrs I've been getting my wine in the form of grapeSEED extract. No hangovers and much improved health.
I love wine. I do not like to spend a lot for it, and have found many that are delicious and are only $10 or less. My new favorite if from ALDI of all places, a delicious Pinot Noir for $6.99. Cost is definitely not a factor in how good a wine is.
So, I get that there is a level of subjectiveness in what's a good wine -- maybe I just happen to like the taste of a certain cheap wine -- but there must be a level of objectiveness also, right? (I hope!)
To use a car analogy, maybe I just happen to prefer the look of a Volkswagen Beetle to a Ferrari because when I dated my wife I had a beetle, but we can objectively test the top speed for each car, or horse power, or chassis strength, or interior space, and have data to show a Ferrari is indeed a better car objectively, and therefore command a higher price.
So what are the ***OBJECTIVE FACTORS*** in comparing wines?
So, I get that there is a level of subjectiveness in what's a good wine -- maybe I just happen to like the taste of a certain cheap wine -- but there must be a level of objectiveness also, right? (I hope!)
To use a car analogy, maybe I just happen to prefer the look of a Volkswagen Beetle to a Ferrari because when I dated my wife I had a beetle, but we can objectively test the top speed for each car, or horse power, or chassis strength, or interior space, and have data to show a Ferrari is indeed a better car objectively, and therefore command a higher price.
So what are the ***OBJECTIVE FACTORS*** in comparing wines?
What these factors are ultimately getting at is: wine identification.
Part of what makes wine interesting is that climate, soil, grape, and process all combine to create different experiences in a glass. There are certain regions and winemakers particularly well known for the wines they produce. For regions, you will often find that wines evolved with cuisine, so burgundy's cool climate pinot noirs and chardonnays mate nicely with the region's beef, snails, cheeses, mustards, hams, freshwater fish, frog legs, and mushrooms.
As to objectivity in quality? Like the car example, it's a mix of subjective preference and objective characteristics. Better grapes produce more flavor. Much like a luxury car will use soft, high quality leather seats, high-end wine will use high quality grapes. Oak barrel aging is a common characteristic of fine wine. Sometimes stainless steel or concrete will be used for cost or preference--but oak is kind of like a sport-tuned suspension. It may not be right for all circumstances, but it is a commonly preferred and more laborious/expensive feature.
The biggest factor in wine quality is the terroir: the combination of earth, temperature, and weather that combines in a location to make a wine distinct from others made even from the same clone of the same grape. Russian River, California focuses on the Burgundy grapes, but the terroir makes the wines very different from one another.
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