A digression

While I dance on the graves of Pat Robertson and James Watt (only the good die young, it seems), let's take a break from more serious matters and consider this, which I have known all along.

Wine snobbery is complete bullshit.  Even the ostensible experts -- wine critics, sommeliers, collectors, winemakers with expensive labels -- can't tell Two Buck Chuck or a jug from Chateau Lafitte Rothschild. They can't even tell red from white -- they're fooled by food coloring. Put an expensive label on a bottle, and they'll make all sorts of elaborate comments about it's unique qualities and praise it to the skies, slap a cheap label on it and they'll say it's junk -- we're talking about the exact same wine here. The whole industry is nothing but a scam. There's never any reason to spend more than $12 on a bottle of wine. Just don't tell your guests.

Same goes for bourbon, BTW. There's  a liquor store in the next town that has a whole shelf full of bottles ranging from $50 to $150. I will bet you that blindfolded, nobody can tell them from Jim Beam. Also, too, gin. The most ridiculous of all is vodka, which by definition, by law, has to consist of 100% ethanol and water, without distinctive odor or taste. The way they make vodka is to dilute grain alcohol with water,  and then they'll sell it with an arbitrary label and price tag. 

 

This also tells you something about Economics 101, which is also complete bullshit in 100 ways that I won't bother to mention here. You can actually get people to buy something by charging more for it. People are for sure stupid.