Poll: What price QPR?

For me, every weekend is a special occasion, it's when I open the wine!

Binge drinker, huh?

Hey, I could have just as easily said that every meal is a special occasion, it's when I eat food!

Compulsive eating disorder, huh?

I see the jokes just keep coming.

I should quit while I'm behind!

Nah, you're safe. I'm stopping now.

[David M. Bueker]

Rahsaan - Hoke has you confused with Alan Wolfe for some reason.

While I went into this with an understanding that it was a flawed question/poll (aren't they all?), I do think the results so far present an interesting, if somewhat predictable picture. The bulk of the respondents have chosen either $20 or $30 as the cut off point (I bet 5 years ago it would have been $10 and $20...sigh), with a small group at $100 or more.

For me, I chose $30 (and would indeed have chosen $20 a few years back), as at the $30 price point there are so many wines that perform well above their pay grade. Things like the Ridge Lytton and Geyserville which can be had for under $30 with a little effort (or a case discount), Eric Texier's myriad offerings, and the Kurt Darting sweet wines (BA/Eiswein) are the poster children for QPR.

David,

I haven't voted but I tend to agree with you if you ignore the high end. $30 is about my cut off point. As someone else said, when you say "this is a QPR wine" you tend to be in a self imposed price range and for me $30 is about the cut off for that statement.

For the record, I never said that Yquem was a "QPR wine"; I just said that for me it has QPR.

And yes, Ridge Geyserville, which can always be purchased in Mass. for slightly under $30 "on deal", may be the world's greatest QPR wine (particularly if you consider the long track record of excellence).

If one really gets geeky, there has to be a limit somewhere but I am not sure exactly where that limit exists. If one assumes that it is possible to quantify quality then to maintain the same QPR (if one believes it is really a ratio) a $40 QPR would need to have twice the quality of a $20 QPR. It follows that a $60 would be 3X, $80 - 4x, $100-5X, etc. At some point it should become impossible to continue to increase the quality proportionally to the price increase. Where that point is I have no clue.

[David M. Bueker]

If one really gets geeky, there has to be a limit somewhere but I am not sure exactly where that limit exists. If one assumes that it is possible to quantify quality then to maintain the same QPR (if one believes it is really a ratio) a $40 QPR would need to have twice the quality of a $20 QPR. It follows that a $60 would be 3X, $80 - 4x, $100-5X, etc. At some point it should become impossible to continue to increase the quality proportionally to the price increase. Where that point is I have no clue.

Sort of a logarithmic curve of QPR.

If one really gets geeky, there has to be a limit somewhere but I am not sure exactly where that limit exists. If one assumes that it is possible to quantify quality then to maintain the same QPR (if one believes it is really a ratio) a $40 QPR would need to have twice the quality of a $20 QPR. It follows that a $60 would be 3X, $80 - 4x, $100-5X, etc. At some point it should become impossible to continue to increase the quality proportionally to the price increase. Where that point is I have no clue.

Sort of a logarithmic curve of QPR.

A Fermat Theorem of Wine?

[David M. Bueker]

If one really gets geeky, there has to be a limit somewhere but I am not sure exactly where that limit exists. If one assumes that it is possible to quantify quality then to maintain the same QPR (if one believes it is really a ratio) a $40 QPR would need to have twice the quality of a $20 QPR. It follows that a $60 would be 3X, $80 - 4x, $100-5X, etc. At some point it should become impossible to continue to increase the quality proportionally to the price increase. Where that point is I have no clue.

Sort of a logarithmic curve of QPR.

A Fermat Theorem of Wine?

So Hoke, you're saying that there is no wine that can satisfy the following:

Fermats Last QPR.jpg

You'll have to talk to Brian there, David. He's the one that started this particular meander down the mathematical brick road.

Any wine can have good quality for the price ("good qpr") but in my mind a "qpr wine" does connote a price point. To me it's under $25, so I voted $30.

There was a time when I would not spend over $30 for a domestic wine (but occasionally spent up to $50 for a European wine.) Both of those limits have gone up over the years as prices rose and as my financial circumstances improved. However, what I cherish about Ridge Lytton Springs and Geyserville (and Lytton Springs was one of my first epiphany domestic wines) is that I could buy them then within that $30 limit and they haven't increased much in price in the years since. A true bargain.

A good QPR constitutes a wine that I would highly recommend to a friend at the price. Since most of my friends are non-geek, value drinkers I would be hard pressed to recommend anything above $20 as "a cheap wine that tastes like a much more expensive wine".

[James Roscoe]

OUCH!!!

But for many wine geeks, it seems to me that QPR carries a distinct connotation - wines of relatively low price that taste better than they drink, thus offering the appearance of quality for an exceptional value. It applies to great cheap wines but not to great pricey wines, even those that are more than competitive at their price point.

Yes, and this is why there's legitimacy in David's point IMO. Considering QPR as literally the ratio of quality to price, I think the question of whether QPR falls as price increases is an interesting one. Put another way, a wine could be $100, but still be perceived as much higher in quality than most other wines costing $100.

If you could be bothered, you could plot your considered QPR of many wines against price and find out. Where the curve began to "flatline" - reach an asymptote - at high cost would give you the answer to the poll, but it's only one part of the curve and the rest of the curve would also give interesting insight.

I voted for a ceiling of $30 (= a range from €22-25) because that allows inclusion of such world class wines as Vouvray from Huet and Foreau, a lot of Germans and, until a few years ago, Rancia from Fèlsina. It is also about my current limit for regular purchases. (I'm well stocked for my likely needs in more "important" wines.)

The flip side of QPR is also worth considering. How many of us who, unlike me, are sitting on stocks of, say, Lafite-Rothschild or Pétrus, would continue to drink them rather than sell them off in order to buy a similar quantity of, say, Pichon-Comtesse or VCC at about 10% of the proceeds, banking the remaining 90%?

How many of us who, unlike me, are sitting on stocks of, say, Lafite-Rothschild or Pétrus, would continue to drink them rather than sell them off in order to buy a similar quantity of, say, Pichon-Comtesse or VCC at about 10% of the proceeds, banking the remaining 90%?

That would impress all in-house probation officers!!

I don't believe that the quality of wines much over $50 or 60 is sufficiently greater than high-quality similarly-styled lower priced wines to justify saying that they deliver good quality given their price. As you start paying $75, 100, or more for wines, you are paying for something other than purely a high quality wine.

If one really gets geeky, there has to be a limit somewhere but I am not sure exactly where that limit exists. If one assumes that it is possible to quantify quality then to maintain the same QPR (if one believes it is really a ratio) a $40 QPR would need to have twice the quality of a $20 QPR. It follows that a $60 would be 3X, $80 - 4x, $100-5X, etc. At some point it should become impossible to continue to increase the quality proportionally to the price increase. Where that point is I have no clue.

Aren't we just looking for the point of diminishing marginal returns?

If one really gets geeky, there has to be a limit somewhere but I am not sure exactly where that limit exists. If one assumes that it is possible to quantify quality then to maintain the same QPR (if one believes it is really a ratio) a $40 QPR would need to have twice the quality of a $20 QPR. It follows that a $60 would be 3X, $80 - 4x, $100-5X, etc. At some point it should become impossible to continue to increase the quality proportionally to the price increase. Where that point is I have no clue.

Aren't we just looking for the point of diminishing marginal returns?

Yes.

I don't believe that the quality of wines much over $50 or 60 is sufficiently greater than high-quality similarly-styled lower priced wines to justify saying that they deliver good quality given their price. As you start paying $75, 100, or more for wines, you are paying for something other than purely a high quality wine.

Well.. I have had enough of higher priced wines to say that is definitely not so, at least as a blanket statement. I have had Marcassin Pinots, Cheval Blancs, Heitz Martha's Vineyards, Phelps Insignias, Dunn Howell Mt., Leoville Las Cases, Salon, etc. that have achieved a level of quality, to me, that lower priced wines have not been able to achieve. It's not a perfect correlation between price and quality, but it certainly is at times a direct relation.

Well, I didn't mean to imply that the higher priced wine wasn't better, but that rather you are almost always paying mostly for something other than quality. Incrementally, as you pay more, less and less of that increase is in terms of actual qualitative improvements. For example, you might get the hypothetical 95 point wine for $50, but to get the other 5 points you end up spending several hundred more. Sure, you're buying and getting something more (a particular flavor profile, a label that influences your perception positively, etc), but what you clearly are not getting is a good QPR.

A perfect example is a bunch of friends who did a blind comparison of '01 d'Yquem and the top cuvee of an '01 Loupiac (Loupiac is across the river from Sauternes/Barsac). The d'Yquem WAS better. Of course, the d'Yquem cost several hundred dollars and the Loupiac was about $40.

The $100 "QPR" that is relative to a $500 peer is mostly something that I think we rationalize, because I think in many cases you're still paying alot over the $20, $30, or even $50 stepsister. Obviously this is perception-driven so your mileage may vary. And, of course, all bets are off if your goal is flipping rather than drinking.

but what you clearly are not getting is a good QPR.

Not necessarily true, Jim. What YOU are not getting is a good QPR. The person purchasing it may very well be receiving what he/she determines is excellent QPR.

Obviously this is perception-driven so your mileage may vary.

Precisely to the point of those who say QPR is a ratio and not a fixed point, and operates on a singular perceptive scale for each person to determine.

[David M. Bueker]

I just have to say that I love flawed polls!