The Wine Lover: High prices can be misleading

If you wanted to, you could spend more than $100,000 on one bottle of wine. Some Thomas Jefferson collection bottles have sold for that much, and there is even a story of a waiter breaking a bottle in a restaurant that was insured for $225,000!
I know what you’re saying right now: Ridiculous!
You’re right — it is.
So, how expensive does it get in California? One of the most expensive bottles I know of is called Screaming Eagle, a cabernet sauvignon-merlot blend from Napa that fetches well over $1,000 a bottle. I worked in San Francisco at a wine bar a few years ago, and we had a Screaming Eagle tasting. The stuff sold for $50 an ounce, and there was a line of people willing to pay it. Imagine paying $50 for an ounce of fermented grape juice!
Locally, some of our most expensive bottles include Kathryn Kennedy’s cabernet sauvignon, Ridge’s Montebello, and Pleasant Valley’s pinot noir. They are all within the $100 range.
So why do people (rich people, that is) spend so much money on one bottle?
It’s a simple matter of supply and demand. Like any other product, when the demand is high and there is a limited amount of the product, the price is going to skyrocket.
The truth of the matter is — and this is only my opinion — that when you start paying more than $50 a bottle, the quality barely goes up. If I put a $50 bottle, a $500 bottle and a $1,000 bottle in front of the average wine drinker, they most certainly would not be able to tell the difference in a blind tasting. For the most part, it’s the scarcity of and demand for the wine that is going up, and not the quality.
Here is a general range that I use when I buy wine: At less than $15, you are looking at mostly inexpensive wines that will be fairly low quality, though there are exceptions.
In the $20 to $50 range, you will find both gems and disappointments. This is the range I typically shop in. I have found some exceptional wines for just over $20. Shopping in this range should assure you a well-made and passable wine, at the very least.
Once you eclipse $50, you should be getting a “fine” wine that, one would hope, is usually small-production and sought-after. If I am spending $100 on a bottle, then it’s probably a special occasion or a good night at the poker table.
For those of you who are wondering, I did get to try the Screaming Eagle, and it was a memorable and well-made, fruit-forward wine. However, I would put the value somewhere closer to $50 a bottle, not an ounce.
Cheers!
• Austin Twohig is a certified sommelier and partner in The Santa Cruz Experience, which conducts winery tours in the Santa Cruz Mountains. Contact him at

au****@th********************.com











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