Would you pay $500 dollars for a bottle of wine?

[James Roscoe]

My god, you are a bloodthirsty bunch!

I feel like I'm standing in the Coliseum in Rome.

Where the masses drank watered down wine (in Rome) and beer (in most of the eastern empire, especially Egypt). It beats bearbaiting.

The elite drank some stange wine blends too.

I wonder if Robin could give us an emoticon that has a "thumbs down"? It would save time.

When is this thread going to be about wine again?

Been there, done that.

Great feeling!

[And my taste of the wine was great too. :-)]

Where the masses drank watered down wine (in Rome) and beer (in most of the eastern empire, especially Egypt). It beats bearbaiting.

The elite drank some stange wine blends too.

You know, James, I've been doing some thinking about that lately.

Seemed like a lot of strange stuff those crazy Romans and Greeks were drinking.....but on the other hand, I remember reading about this really disgusting sauce that the Romans were actually apesh$t over...put it on pretty much everything. Had to be available at any Roman table. Couldn't do without it. And it sounded really, honestly, awful: rotted, fermented fish guts and fish heads and bones, stuck in a jar until all the solids dissolved into this glucky mass, then filtered and served up to the smacking of Roman lips.

Then I realized this yucky stuff I was reading about, garum, was essentially Nuoc Mam (or Nuoc Cham, or whatever the many names it goes by), the standard fish oil sauce that's standard in Viet and Thai food (and virtually every other cuisine that touched on a seaboard in history, I guess).

Made me stop and think.

But would you really pay $500 a bottle for it, Hoke?

:-)

Maybe $319.37....but not one penny more, Bob! And only in Oregon.

[Robin Garr]

Been there, done that.

Great feeling!

[And my taste of the wine was great too. ]

Same here, Bob. I wouldn't do it every day. Not even every year. But it was one (or two) of my most memorable wine and personal/emotional experiences. The two can't be separated, of course. That's the point.

Real life circumstance:

Someone you truly care about in your life says in an off-handed conversation that they would like to taste wine xxxxxx just once in their life. It costs $500 per bottle. Do you buy one to open for them? I would.

I'm with you, David.

Even getting it for yourself.

Let's say you're a shoe person and you spend your life studying, talking about, and enjoying, shoes (hey, there's got to be someone).

While not 25 times better than a "QPR" shoe, the ultimate dream is a pair of John Lobb Oxfords. If you were really into shoes, wouldn't you want to get a pair? Even if it cost 1/50th of a year's salary? Just so you could try them, feel them, and walk in them even once?

I'm not a shoe person, but one day I'm going to buy and drink a bottle of Roumier Musigny and DRC Romanee-Conti. Call me crazy, but that's the way it is.

Best,
Joe

Been there, done that.

Great feeling!

[And my taste of the wine was great too. ]

Same here, Bob. I wouldn't do it every day. Not even every year. But it was one (or two) of my most memorable wine and personal/emotional experiences. The two can't be separated, of course. That's the point.

Yup! I've taken the plunge once (or more). In the "or more" category the relative amount I spent, considering my penury at the time, would've been far more than $500 would mean to me now.

And it was worth it. It was definitely worth it. Would've been worth more.

While not 25 times better than a "QPR" shoe, the ultimate dream is a pair of John Lobb Oxfords. If you were really into shoes, wouldn't you want to get a pair? Even if it cost 1/50th of a year's salary? Just so you could try them, feel them, and walk in them even once?

There's times I really worry about you, Joe.

[James Roscoe]

While not 25 times better than a "QPR" shoe, the ultimate dream is a pair of John Lobb Oxfords. If you were really into shoes, wouldn't you want to get a pair? Even if it cost 1/50th of a year's salary? Just so you could try them, feel them, and walk in them even once?

There's times I really worry about you, Joe.

Call me crazy, but I think Joe may have a point. I worry about Joe too, but not because of this post.

"The two can't be separated, of course. That's the point."

Exactly right, Robin.

To the title of the discussion, I answer yes.
Then, in the poll, is a bottle of $250 ten times better than a bottle of $25, I answered yes, but I would never formulate the question in this way.
When I pay a lot of money for a wine, I want to have a "unique" emotion.
The people who climb the 14 summits above 8,000 metres will not say that they have ten times more pleasure than climbing a mountain of 800 metres.
They want to feel something "unique".
And for me the "unique" feeling is my motivation to pay a lot of money to enjoy an unforgettable taste, which is not ten times better, but is special.

Hoke, you've reminded me of an eerie connection. I was looking for a recipe for fish sauce and found this one on Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fish_sauce#Recipe

It calls for a quart of claret. Note the date of the recipe -- 1881 -- on the verge of the Phylloxera meltdown.

Imagine all the pre-Phylloxera claret sacrificed for fish sauce. :-)

Regards, Bob

.....And for me the "unique" feeling is my motivation to pay a lot of money to enjoy an unforgettable taste, which is not ten times better, but is special.

Well said François!

I'd pay more than $500 to be there when the BUTTON is PUSHED!!!!!!!!
Nothing else on this thread is worth " A pail of warmed over spit"

Oh, shit... Lou has entered this space of restraint and civility... Hoke, did you see that? There, as is often said, goes the neighborhood...

The people who climb the 14 summits above 8,000 metres will not say that they have ten times more pleasure than climbing a mountain of 800 metres.

Good analogy, Francois.

And for me the "unique" feeling is my motivation to pay a lot of money to enjoy an unforgettable taste, which is not ten times better, but is special.

The answer to the original question, as many of us have stated already, is "yes". But the right circumstances have to present themselves. An overflow of cash. Or a certain faith that the wine is truly extraordinary. Or simply not caring about any other uses one may have for that money (Hoke's "You have only weeks to live so you blow it all" example, you go Queen Latifah!). Or perhaps you have some strange investment scheme in your mind, or a charity...

Again, we have certain justifying circumstances involved. Hell, I've been known to pay even more than $500 for a bottle here and there.

The thing is that that bottle had a history attached to it. Its producer had a solid track record. Perhaps I had tried the wine before through the generosity of friends and thought it a sound investment in my own enjoyment. To paraphrase the immortal words (from only last night) of SFJoe: Here I am, going the extra few hundred miles to marry the hot girl. And what's great is that her mother and her grandmother are still hot, too... So, pay a heap of money for a bottle of 2005 Ch. Pavie? What guarantees do I have that the current regime at that property is capable of creating a work of art worthy of said heap? But pay the same heap of money for 1970 Cheval Blanc, a wine I know I'll love? Probably.

It's all so relative. What I know is I refuse to accomodate the arrogance of certain new producers who, out of the blue, claim they're making a wine on the level of, say, Pétrus or La Tâche. Wines like Pétrus or La Tâche, from the right vintage and in the right context, can be soul-stirring, completely unique, indescribable--the equivalents of a sublime painting by Rembrandt or Chagall, a perfect performance by Coltrane or Miles, 375 Park Avenue seen in just the right light (that would be Mies van der Rohe's Seagram Building, for the non architecturally passionate among us), Glenn Gould in top form playing The Goldberg Variations, or Casals playing Bach's cello suites, Prince playing an exquisite solo on his old Telecaster, in a small club, or that first reading of Borges, or great sex, or a hurricane watched from safety, or a sunset in Key West (without tourists). One would be hard pressed to care about money in their presence.

But those "certain new producers" I was talking about... I remember very well the case of Peter Sisseck and his Dominio de Pingus, which caused such a great media stir in the wine world back in the late 1990s. Sisseck released the stuff at a ludicrous price, claiming it was "the Spanish Pétrus" (no less). I remember tasting it at one point, in one of those trade events that "don't hurt" (yes, I briefly partook of the wien trade once, long ago) and thinking that the wine could very well be from anywhere, since all one could taste in it were the barrels and some rather anonymous fruit. My comments at the event were that if that was "the Duero taken to the next level", I would gladly wait downstairs with a bottle of 1942 Vega Sicilia "Unico", which would have cost me about the same as that Pingus.

The point of this ramble? It's all relative. I remember when in the 1980s those "industrially-produced" paintings by Mark Kostabi were al the rage among "collectors" (I thought I'd rescue this old chestnut of an example from the days of the "old" WLDG). A whole bunch of people aspired to buy the stuff (along with those ridiculous Duran Duran prints by Patrick Nagel); there was speculation. Some clever folks made a killing trading in these "artworks". And where are those paintings now? What are they worth, really?

SUre, wines like Pétrus, La Tâche, Lafite, Margaux, etc. have been--historically--prohibitively expensive for the average man. Today they fetch absurd prices in an artificially overstimulated marketplace. I sit back and think, though, that they took their time (some of them centuries) in coming to this absurdity, which robs them of any dignity they may have had in the past.

I think that's enough for now...

I thought this was more or less on topic (considering thread drift), and might lighten the day for some.

Humans existed as members of small bands of nomadic hunters and gatherers. They lived on deer in the mountains during the summer and would go to the coast and live on fish and lobster in winter.

The 2 most important events in all of history were the invention of beer and the invention of the wheel. The wheel was invented to get man to the beer. These were the foundation of modern civilization and together were the catalyst for the splitting of humanity into 2 distinct subgroups: Liberals and Conservatives.

Once beer was discovered it required grain and that was the beginning of agriculture. Neither the glass bottle nor aluminum can were invented yet, so while our early human ancestors were sitting around waiting for them to be invented, they just stayed close to the brewery. That's how villages were formed.

Some men spent their days tracking and killing animals to B-B-Q at night while they were drinking beer. This was the beginning of what is known as "the Conservative movement."

Other men who were weaker and less skilled at hunting learned to live off the conservatives by showing up for the nightly B-B-Q's and doing the sewing, fetching and hair dressing. This was the beginning of the Liberal movement. Some of these liberal men eventually evolved into women. The rest became known as 'girliemen.'

Some noteworthy liberal achievements include the domestication of cats, the invention of group therapy and group hugs and the concept of democratic voting to decide how to divide the meat and beer that conservatives provided.

Over the years conservatives came to be symbolized by the largest, most powerful land animal on earth, the elephant. Liberals are symbolized by the jackass.

Modern liberals like imported beer (with lime added), but most prefer white wine or imported bottled water. They eat raw fish but like their beef well done. Sushi, tofu, and French food are standard liberal fare.

Another interesting revolutionary side note about liberals: most of their women have higher testosterone levels than their men. Most social workers, personal injury attorneys, journalists, dreamers in Hollywood and group therapists are liberals. Liberals invented the designated hitter rule because it wasn't "fair" to make the pitcher also bat.

Conservatives drink domestic beer. They eat red meat and still provide for their women. Conservatives are big-game hunters, rodeo cowboys, lumberjacks, construction workers, firemen, medical doctors, police officers, corporate executives, Marines, athletes and generally anyone who works productively. Conservatives who own companies hire other conservatives who want to work for a living.

Liberals produce little or nothing. They like to "govern" the producers and decide what to do with the production. Liberals believe Europeans are more enlightened than Americans. That is why most of the liberals remained in Europe when conservatives were coming to America. They crept in after the Wild West was tame and created a business of trying to get MORE for nothing.

Here ends today's lesson in world history:

It should be noted that a Liberal may have a momentary urge to respond to the above and a guilt feeling before simply laughing, denying and forwarding it. A Conservative will be so convinced of the absolute truth of this history that it will be forwarded immediately.

[David M. Bueker]

Or perhaps just say that I found it silly yet offensive, no matter how it was meant.

And, yet, I'm sure it took a Liberal to fix the grammar and spelling of the above text.

Is this what they call "humor"?

"Then, in the poll, is a bottle of $250 ten times better than a bottle of $25, I answered yes, but I would never formulate the question in this way.
When I pay a lot of money for a wine, I want to have a "unique" emotion.
The people who climb the 14 summits above 8,000 metres will not say that they have ten times more pleasure than climbing a mountain of 800 metres.

They want to feel something "unique".

And for me the "unique" feeling is my motivation to pay a lot of money to enjoy an unforgettable taste, which is not ten times better, but is special."

François, what a spectacular way to knock back sour grapes.

My congratulations and thank you very much. Regards, Bob

Of course, the large-ass print is absolutely priceless in this context...

Seemed like a lot of strange stuff those crazy Romans and Greeks were drinking.....but on the other hand, I remember reading about this really disgusting sauce that the Romans were actually apesh$t over...put it on pretty much everything. Had to be available at any Roman table. Couldn't do without it. And it sounded really, honestly, awful: rotted, fermented fish guts and fish heads and bones, stuck in a jar until all the solids dissolved into this glucky mass, then filtered and served up to the smacking of Roman lips.

Then I realized this yucky stuff I was reading about, garum, was essentially Nuoc Mam (or Nuoc Cham, or whatever the many names it goes by), the standard fish oil sauce that's standard in Viet and Thai food (and virtually every other cuisine that touched on a seaboard in history, I guess).

Made me stop and think.

Did you, by any chance, get your Roman recipes at http://www.mit.edu:8001/people/wchuang/cooking/recipes/Roman/Ancient_Roman.html#9?