jag - see above reply. So the markets are such that some wines are heavily underpriced and others overpriced, often because of extrinsic social variables! Absolutely! I'd be very surprised if the correlation was zero, however! Show me the data!

I'm interested to see how they did it. I'm open to new data and changing my mind (I have done several times already, and used to be insufferable!) but I want to see several studies with good method.

I see you're not denying that more expensive wine can taste better, and I misread this at first to think that you were denying any possible objective (conventionally-agreed at least) values for "higher quality" wine and that it was all bull. You haven't said that, and so I think you're not contesting that, but just noting the market's strangeness, that there is no relation in price and a wine's agreed quality.

> but just noting the market's strangeness, that there is no relation in price and a wine's agreed quality.

Correct! Price correlates with rarity and place of origin and all sorts of other neat stuff, but as far as 'will I like this wine?', ain't no there there.

That said, individual people should buy based on their tastes - but a $20 bottle of Burgundy wine has even odds to be better than a $40 bottle of Burgundy. The only way is to try it!

We'll then just have to agree too disagree. Until you can show me some good and extensive research to demonstrate otherwise, I'll go with the extensive soft data there is out there to support the consensual position.

This study is worth a skim: http://www.wine-economics.org/aawe/wp-content/uploads/2012/1...