Comment by tptacek | Hacker News Reader

Comment by tptacek | Hacker News Reader

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And note that's the range between "decent" and "cheap" within a specific bracket of varietal and region. Anyone who drinks wine regularly can pick out a high-end Burgundy Pinot from a collection of mid-range California reds.

And here the analysis starts to break down, because if you're looking for the characteristics of a great Burgundy, you probably can't source them from California for $20 a bottle; you can get "cheap" French imports in that price range, but the price gap between "acceptable" and "good" is wider. In short: you're not going to get what you don't pay for.

(I'm using Burgundy as an example only because a restaurant blew my mind with one a couple years ago; someone more wine-literate can substitute better examples --- for instance, the same "much larger gap in price between decent and good" may exist for California Bordeaux-style "Meritage" wines).

And should this surprise anyone? Does anyone here think there's low price/quality correlation in beer?

> And should this surprise anyone? Does anyone here think there's low price/quality correlation in beer?

Perhaps...there's some superb regular day drinkers that run under $2/bottle...and some of the more expensive specialty beers can cost upwards of $8/pint and taste like sewage.

(of course the really cheap beer is pretty universally bad)

Nobody here is going to claim that you can't tell a barrel-aged Belgian-style ale from a bottle of Newcastle.

There's lot of very drinkable wine at a $20 price point, but a $20 bottle is unlikely to surprise you with its complexity.

>but a $20 bottle is unlikely to surprise you with its complexity

Disagree. I've had 20 dollar wine that I feel is more complex and much better than 60 dollar bottles. Now, there may be better 60 dollar bottles but that doesn't mean the best 20 dollar isn't better than the worst 100 dollar bottle.

There is clearly a lot of overpriced wine. That's not as entertaining a conclusion as the one this post is trying to advance.

Just so long as none of you americans try and tell us that Bud is beer, not "beer flavoured substitute"

some of the more expensive specialty beers can cost upwards of $8/pint and taste like sewage

Ah, but it requires special effort to produce a drinkable sort of sewage-tasting-beer and a particular period of training to learn to enjoy the unique sewage taste... of Orval, Flemish Sour Ale or lambic "natural" beer. And don't even mention the engine-oil taste of the great imperial stouts...

Well, at least my training myself to like $8 beer was less costly than someone else training themselves to like $50 wine...

> engine-oil taste of the great imperial stouts

That's precisely the taste I'm looking for in a good stout...that or old burned steak and rye bread.

> Anyone who drinks wine regularly can pick out a high-end Burgundy Pinot from a collection of mid-range California reds.

Well, I drink wine quite regularly and I wouldn't be so confident, but I have very little experience with high end Burgundy. Put some Oregon pinots in front of me though and I can make some reasonable guesses.

Still, I had one from a small producer Thanksgiving weekend that tasted nothing like a typical Oregon pinot, and in fact reminded me of a Burgundy I had a couple years back.

You'd know even without knowing varietals. I can tell merlot from cabernet, but I'm mostly wine-illiterate; but the glass of pinot we got with our wine pairings at Alinea was unlike any wine I've ever had in my life; I recognized instantly that it was something special.

And that's the only point I'm making: there are special wines out there, and many of them are not cheap, and if you want their particular kind of special, you're going to have to pay.

The grandparent commenter made this point more clearly than I have. You can get crappy expensive wine, but for the most part, you won't get what you don't pay for.

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