Totally OT Wine Q

[docholliday]

That's probably true, to some extent at least - the people who go for more upmarket stuff (excluding those who are just buying something expensive to look flash) are quite likely to be looking for some more complex flavours that tend to develop more with age (of the wine, that is!). Unfortunately a lot of the premium wine gets sold when it's nowhere ready to drink, on the assumption that you'll buy it and stick it away in a cellar somewhere to mature - if you drimk it too soon it may not impress, and very likely won't seem worth the difference in price. I just spent a couple of hours tasting wines (mainly from 2009) that were put up by a well-known merchant, and somewhat depressingly I found when I looked at the price list that there did seem to be a fairly strong correlation between how much I liked the wine and the price, even if there were a few which lay well above the curve, and some which were rather below. Unfortunately the one I really liked was way beyond what I wanted to pay, at =A3800 per dozen! I suspect when you get to that level you pay quite a lot more for a small improvement, because of the scarcity value - rather like the improvement between a car costing =A3100k and one costing =A3200k...

[djc]

Not just scarcity I think. With any luxury the fact that someone is prepared to pay more than the minimum implies they have some spare money so the chances of getting away with a increased price is greater. The difference in quality between the lowest priced bottle and the next lowest is likely to be significant, but as the price rises increment in quality is not so great.

[docholliday]

True enough - you need the combination of scarcity and spare cash to push up prices of non-essentials like high end wine. At the bottom end, of course, the picture is distorted by the =A32 approx of duty plus VAT on duty, plus other relatively fixed costs like the cost of the bottle and cork and transport, which means that going up from say =A34 to =A35 the actual amount the winemaker gets for the wine may well have more than doubled. The difference between your =A35 bottle and =A320 bottle represents an enormous increase in price at the vineyard. A lot of this can be justified by greater care taken in the growing and winemaking, as this will very likely require a smaller production per unit area - and when you get to the really expensive wines the cost of buying the vineyard can be stratospheric.