> different, not better

This is really important. I think some people think that the reason a $1000 bottle of wine costs that much is that it's so awesomely good that a single sip will give you an orgasm or something like that. That's not it at all. A $1000 bottle of wine costs that much for one reason only: someone with more money than sense is willing to pay that much for it for some unfathomable reason. Even if that person thinks that wine is awesome, there is no reason to think that you will think it's awesome. Everyone has different tastes.

> A $1000 bottle of wine costs that much for one reason

Two reasons I think then. Expensive wines are also made the expensive way. Hand picked grapes off ancient low yield vines. Some even work the ground with horses rather than tractors to reduce soil compacting. Wooden barrels, wooden boxes etc all contribute to make the cost of production much higher...whether you like the taste or not

The cost of production sets a floor on the price, because if you can't sell it for what it cost you to produce then you won't stay in business. (That's true for any product.) But a bottle of Romanee Conti retails for $15,000 or more. I guarantee you it didn't cost them anywhere near that much to produce it. Even inspecting every single grape by hand wouldn't cost that much.

Indeed, like I said, there are two reasons. The pattern burnt into the end of the wine box is quite literally called a brand...and brand it is. I hear the Chinese nouveaux riche who drove up the price of first growth claret (Latour, Lafon, Mouton) drink it with Coke to hide the bitter taste!

Wow DRC is expensive in the US! I saw a 30 year old example sell a few weeks ago in the UK for considerably less than that, less than £5,000 ($6,700ish).

> I hear the Chinese nouveaux riche who drove up the price of first growth claret (Latour, Lafon, Mouton) drink it with Coke to hide the bitter taste!

Do you have a source for this? I would very much like to read it.

I don't have an authoritative source, but I've read this anecdote in several of Jancis Robinson's wine columns. Here's one where it is mentioned as an aside: https://www.jancisrobinson.com/articles/chinas-new-connoisse...

All that being said I get the feeling this is something that someone somewhere saw once 15 years ago, and then the story has just been spreading from there.

Yep. We used to make a barrel with my dad every year. Handpicked and and threw stuff out that was spoiled. Took an evening for 100 litres. We could usually tell the difference between that and the mass produced mash-everything-for-volume easy.

An Anecdote, when I was younger, me and a few colleagues got into whiskey and had somewhat regular meetings. One time I had 2 bottles I got for Christmas. Same distillery, one 12yo, the other 24yo. We all liked both of them, but also all had the feeling that the 24yo offered more than we could actually get out of it. When I had it again a few years later, I could appreciate it much more.