# Wino



## Forebiz (May 31, 2018)

So this year for my wife and I's 40th birthdays we decided to go with another couple to Napa. Left the kids at home and tried to ignore the cost of the trip as there isn't much frugality in Napa. We decided to splurge and bought a half dozen expensive (for us) bottles of wine (50-175USD). Rather then have them sit we've been opening up the bottles fairly regularly.

This past weekend I decided to do a blind taste test with one of the Napa bottles and a couple others from Costco with the same friends. The bottles were all Cab Sav priced $9, $15, $125. The unfortunate results: All 4 of us choose the $9 bottle as our favorite, 3 of 4 choose the $15 bottle second.

I mainly did this experiment because I felt that there was a good chance something like this would happen and I could know for future reference that I never need to spend that much on a bottle again. It also justifies my cheapness (I mean frugality) moving forward.

I will say after our taste test we drank the expensive one first. The expensive one was also quite different then the other ones. To use terms of a wine connoisseur I'll say it was quite oakey, and bolder then the others, It also had a much better aroma. The cheap bottle had almost no aroma in comparison.


----------



## heyjude (May 16, 2009)

You could have achieved the same thing at a lower cost by staying closer to home.

Pop a cork. - View Article: https://matadornetwork.com/read/underrated-canadian-wine-region-napa-valley/

There are two types of wine: wine I like, and wine I don’t like. Studies show that there is no correlation between price and likeability. I live in the Okanagan, and I buy only what I like at the vineyards. I never spend more than $35 (CDN).


----------



## pwm (Jan 19, 2012)

I make my own, at a cost of ~ $1.85 per bottle. It seems fine to me, and everyone else I feed it to seems to agree.


----------



## BC Eddie (Feb 2, 2014)

I have made my own wine for decades now but I can't delude myself into thinking it is as good as the commercially available products. (I would not want to offer it to guests. I have had several friends homemade wine and it has been disappointing at best.) ( What I do is buy a good inexpensive wine I like and mix (blend sounds better doesn't it? with a bottle of my homemade. 

BC liquor also has a great APP that allows me to see other people's ratings of wines they sell. On a regular basis I just go through the ratings looking for the inexpensive wines that get ratings of 4.5 or 5 stars out of five and buy a few for taste-testing and I then buy the winners.


----------



## kcowan (Jul 1, 2010)

Thanks. That BC App looks very useful. It also has a food pairing section that looks reasonable too.


----------



## ian (Jun 18, 2016)

I buy it by the case. I wait until our local store brings in a container load or red plonk and blows it out as a loss leader. We sometimes buy a bottle, then go back for a case. More often we just buy the case because these offers tend to fly off the shelves. Usually a Chilean, Argentine, Spanish, or Australian brand. 

This is one of he great things that I have found with a private liquer store systems. Vendors bring in all sorts of products. They get taxed at the warehouse level so there is none of this business about listings or competing for listings. 


I sometimes buy Costco Kirkland reds. They have always been excellent choices. Just wish our local Costco liquer store would stock as many Kirkland reds as they seem to in the US stores.


----------



## BC Eddie (Feb 2, 2014)

Don't feel bad. Our local Costco does not stock any liquor


----------



## ian (Jun 18, 2016)

We live in Alberta. The liquer laws as they relate to retail are ridiculous. Many of the large grocery chains, and Costco, have liquer stores which is good. We get different products in different stores, competitive prices, and some good sales from time to time. 

The silly part is that they have to be in separate buildings and the buildings cannot be attached. So, at our Costco, the liquer store in in a building about 8m away from the warehouse store. Superstores always place their liquer stores at the far end of the parking lot. Not so great in the winter.

Just wish we had depanneurs, or corner stores, as they do in Quebec that sell beer and wine.


----------



## humble_pie (Jun 7, 2009)

Forebiz said:


> I will say after our taste test we drank the expensive one first. The expensive one was also quite different then the other ones. To use terms of a wine connoisseur I'll say it was quite oakey, and bolder then the others, It also had a much better aroma. The cheap bottle had almost no aroma in comparison.



oakey. Bolder. Better aroma.

now if you were describing people - of any gender - the $125 edition with its oakiness, boldness & enticing aroma would be the obvious choice


----------



## balexis (Apr 4, 2009)

Just a thought: it is also possible that the 2 inexpensive bottles were "ready to drink", while the 125$ one was not and needed multiple years of aging to reach the outcome desired by the wine maker. Some very expensive wines are not really good when too young, but become amazing after some years.

An example i am familiar with is port wine. Vintage port is typically the most expensive type of port there is. But to become awesome, it typically needs to age 20+ years, otherwise it is too bold/strong and has no finesse.


----------



## andrewf (Mar 1, 2010)

Some of the double blind experiments with wine tasting suggest a lot of wine sensory experience is subject to exploitation of expectations.


----------



## BC Eddie (Feb 2, 2014)

Well I know there are some very good, non-cheap, wines out there and I have had a few of them. But I do think there is a lot of hype and self-disillusion as well. Back in the late 80's when I first got into wine I subscribed to a wine letter that made quarterly recommendations on wines to drink now and ones to keep. I would buy a keeper every once in a while (and actually keep it to the recommended date). (By the way there are several web sites you can Google that provide handy "when to drink" charts of most wine regions.) Anyway, I have to say by the time the ready date of the of the keepers rolled around most disappointed.


----------

