Can you taste the difference between a €5 and €8 wine?

In the last couple of months, I have written about two key aspects of wine that affect all consumers. The price and the quality. This month I want to talk about something more complicated – diversity.

A friend was discussing these articles with me and posed the question: “I buy the odd bottle from the local cooperative. I don’t drink much. I buy the one at €5 that I like. If I bought a bottle that sells at €8, would I be able to tell the difference?”

I think this is a very common question that wine consumers ask themselves.

My answer is that it depends. It depends on what the €8 wine is and why it’s priced higher than the €5 one. The key thing is that wine is not a standardised product like orange juice or milk. It’s hugely diverse. The price of wine is not set by the government or even based on its production cost. The price is based pretty much on whether the producer and retailer think the consumer will pay that amount for it. It’s driven by demand, whether that demand is real or created by marketing. In that respect, wine is more like a restaurant meal, a hotel stay or a place at a sporting event. With those three things, I think we can appreciate the diversity of what’s on offer. But with wine I’m not so sure we do. 

Consumers have lots of choices to make before they start to consider which wine they will enjoy or which is offering them the best value for money. First of all, we have the colour. While rosé is fairly consistent in style, red and white wines vary enormously. White wines are often thought of in terms of sweetness and acidity and red wines in terms of body, smoothness and fruitiness.

However, those things are often not what is written on the label. What we see are grape varieties, which region it comes from, the name of the producer, the vintage and the alcohol level. Consumers build up an idea of what to look out for that will result in them liking the wine in the bottle, whether that is through wine education or past experience. Some go for their favourite grape varieties, some for the region, some may stick to one favoured producer, some have a particular alcohol range that appeals to them and a few will take notice of the vintage (often for the wrong reason). While there is a huge diversity of wines, not many consumers have a very diverse appreciation of wine. 

How many people think about what meals they are going to cook that week when choosing wines at the supermarket? How many like to try out wines from an unknown region or obscure grape variety to see what they are like? How many have a range of wines of different sweetness, body or age sitting in their cellar or wine fridge to choose for a particular occasion? I suspect it’s a tiny minority.

Even relatively knowledgeable wine consumers limit themselves to what they have enjoyed the most in the past. Not many have diverse collections or buying habits. Most tend to feature one region or certain grape variety much more than others. In addition, humans are creatures of habit. We develop a taste for what is familiar. As we get older, we tend to be less experimental in our choice of food and drink. Young adults are actually more inclined to try out new flavours than middle-aged ones. However, with wine, many people don’t get into wine or have the disposable income to enjoy the better ones until middle age.

This lack of diversity in our decision-making and drinking experience is a major cause of our confusion over price. People like my friend are trying to compare like with like when it simply isn’t like that.  

If you have a regular Bordeaux Merlot bag-in-box as your daily tipple, will you find much more pleasure in a six-year-old bottle of Crozes-Hermitage, even if you open it with a nice entrecôte? Many people cannot comprehend why wines from Burgundy are so much more expensive than other French regions. They don’t appreciate that the characteristics of a great red Burgundy are unique and unforgettable. 

There is a false image that a wine connoisseur is someone who drinks Château Mouton-Rothschild all the time and turns his nose up at anything else. In my experience, real wine connoisseurs drink a far wider diversity of wines and are far less picky about varieties or regions than people who consider themselves “normal” wine drinkers. The people most likely to say things like “I’m just a white wine drinker” or “I don’t like Syrah” or “Chardonnay gives me a headache” are the ones with the least experience, knowledge or ability to taste.

I have great fun with winery visitors who proclaim to hate all wines aged in barrel or those containing a particular grape. I will serve them exactly what they think they hate, say nothing, and nine times out of ten, they love the wine they assumed they would dislike.

If you recognise any of these traits in yourself, I encourage you to be more diverse in your wine choices. Have a range of wines from different regions, varieties and vintages to choose from, depending on what you are eating. It won’t make you a snob. It will make you less fussy.

Jonathan Hesford has a Postgraduate Diploma in Viticulture and Oenology from Lincoln University, New Zealand and is the owner, vigneron and winemaker of
Domaine Treloar in the Roussillon.
If you have questions on this wine column, email info@domainetreloar.com