{"id":5153,"date":"2011-11-21T01:51:26","date_gmt":"2011-11-21T01:51:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nataliemaclean.com\/blog\/?p=5153"},"modified":"2011-12-19T01:52:50","modified_gmt":"2011-12-19T01:52:50","slug":"wine-price-and-quality-arent-always-directly-related-business-insider","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nataliemaclean.com\/blog\/wine-price-and-quality-arent-always-directly-related-business-insider\/","title":{"rendered":"Wine Price and Quality Aren\u2019t Always Directly Related – Business Insider"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Weekend Inspiration: Good Wine on the Cheap<\/strong><\/p>\n

This week I settled down with a cheap glass of Riesling to read Unquenchable<\/strong><\/a>: A Tipsy Quest for the World\u2019s Best Bargain Wines.<\/p>\n

Almost immediately I learned that in 1775, Thomas Jefferson declared Riesling the \u201cbest breakfast wine.\u201d Looks like I\u2019m off to a great start.<\/p>\n

Unquenchable is written by Natalie MacLean, the wine writer I noted in an earlier post about conquering a niche. (Quick summary: She was strolling through a grocery store in a postpartum sleep-deprived haze when she noticed a food magazine that lacked good wine content. The extent of her writing career consisted of a few articles in her high school newspaper, but she brazenly called the editor and asked if she could contribute an article. Soon her wine writing career was born.)<\/p>\n

I\u2019m drawn to this book because Natalie, like me, is a hard-nosed bargain hunter \u2014 a trait she developed early in life. During her childhood:<\/p>\n

\u201cMoney was tight \u2026 we lived in rented trailers and basement apartments. I wore bread bags in my leaking boots, and we rummaged through piles of secondhand clothing \u2026 at night we joked that we were going \u2018to mattress\u2019 since our beds didn\u2019t have box springs or legs.\u201d<\/p>\n

Some people\u2019s tight-money childhood results in an indiscriminate desire for expensive things, but fortunately Natalie emerged with the practical wisdom that bargains are everywhere.<\/p>\n

She wrote a book based on one very solid premise: price and quality aren\u2019t correlated.<\/p>\n

In fact, Natalie says \u2014 far more eloquently than I did \u2014 the exact same thing that I wrote in an earlier post about the myth of wine pricing:<\/p>\n

\u201cSome regions have natural advantages that make winemaking inexpensive, whether that\u2019s climate or cheap land and labor. Other regions are still establishing their reputations and must keep their prices low to be competitive with better-known wines.\u201d<\/p>\n

Though I\u2019m no wine scholar, I\u2019ve long held this same theory. Some regions produce great cheap wine because they have a gentle climate or cheap labor or business-friendly regulations. Some unknown wineries lacking brand-name appeal offer great wine bargains.<\/p>\n

Conversely, some bottles are expensive not because they\u2019re better, but because the production costs are higher.<\/p>\n

Wine is governed by the same market forces that influence everything we buy and sell; a $10 wine bottle can be better than a $100 bottle. But you must know where to find it.<\/p>\n

Natalie clues us into those economic factors that creates a good wine at a cheap price:<\/p>\n

\u201cin warm regions like the Baroosa Valley (Australia), often the cost of production is cheaper because winemakers aren\u2019t battling disease, rot and weather as much as cool-climate producers do.\u201d<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve heard many people say that the best wine is the one you enjoy. While I agree wholeheartedly, it\u2019s also true that every new bottle you buy is a risk. Will it be worth its $15 or $25 price tag?<\/p>\n

To defray your risk, Natalie sampled more than 15,000 wines around the world and pared down the 147 best values, most under $15. Don\u2019t pick up this book if you\u2019re expecting a snooty, fancy-pants wine review. Her book is a travel memoir told through the lens of wine, laced with tidbits of history, economics, and chemistry.<\/p>\n

Oh, and don\u2019t you dare cross her with a bad wine, or she\u2019ll write a review like this:<\/p>\n

\u201cUnder an initial layer of rotting roadside tomatoes, I detect nuances of burning Fiat tire floating on a lake of rancid olive oil. Pair this wine with nasty divorce settlements or grand jury appearances.\u201d<\/p>\n

Read more reviews of Unquenchable<\/strong><\/a>: A Tipsy Quest for the World\u2019s Best Bargain Wines, or check out Natalie\u2019s previous book, Red, White, and Drunk All Over.<\/p>\n

You can read more reviews of my new wine book<\/a> <\/strong>Unquenchable here.\u00a0 <\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Weekend Inspiration: Good Wine on the Cheap This week I settled down with a cheap glass of Riesling to read Unquenchable: A Tipsy Quest for the World\u2019s Best Bargain Wines. Almost immediately I learned that in 1775, Thomas Jefferson declared Riesling the \u201cbest breakfast wine.\u201d Looks like I\u2019m off to a great start. Unquenchable is written by Natalie MacLean, the wine writer I noted in an earlier post about conquering a niche. (Quick summary: She was strolling through a grocery store in a postpartum sleep-deprived haze when she noticed a food magazine that lacked good wine content. The extent of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[43,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5153","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-unquenchable","category-books-food"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nataliemaclean.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5153","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nataliemaclean.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nataliemaclean.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nataliemaclean.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nataliemaclean.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5153"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.nataliemaclean.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5153\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5563,"href":"https:\/\/www.nataliemaclean.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5153\/revisions\/5563"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nataliemaclean.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5153"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nataliemaclean.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5153"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nataliemaclean.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5153"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}