What price? Overprice!

Hi all,
she can tell it us louder, but not clearer...

http://www.jancisrobinson.com/winenews/winenews.html

Cheers,

Jose

Hi Jose,

Louder but not clear.... this sounds familiar to me :^D... thanks for the post, a very interesting link from Jancis.

Regards.

Joan

Looks like Jancis has hit the nail on the head, again!

";Wine is now a legitimate interest with many young, and not so young, Madrileños and Barcelonans. But as in so many youthful wine markets, most practitioners follow third party recommendations, and often exactly the same third parties at that. So the handful of officially sanctioned great Spanish wines such as L’Ermita from Priorat and Dominio de Pingus from Ribera del Duero sell for as much as a first growth bordeaux";

Oh come on. This suggests that Pingus and L’Ermita are absurdly expensive because winedrinkers in Spain buy these wines to the exclusion of most everything else. Whatever valid points she makes about Bordeaux, does anyone really think this is an accurate picture of the wine market in Spain? If this describes even a single participant of Verema, I would be surprised.

It’s a simplification, of course, but I think the points she makes about these ";designer wines"; is quite valid. The article is, after all, about overpriced wine, not about Spanish wine in general, which, as we all know, offers good QPR in most areas lower down the market.

As an example of the power of fashion, I’m drinking Marboré here in Emngland at a cheaper price than in Spain (must be the first timne ever!), simply because it hasn’t acquired that cult following here yet.

It seems clear to me that she in fact was referring to the Spanish wine market in general. She specifically said that she was characterizing the purchasing practices of ";most practitioners"; (i.e., those ";many young, and not so young, Madrileños and Barcelonans"; for which ";[w]ine is now a legitimate interest";). ";Most"; means most. ";Most"; does not mean a tiny minority of ";practitioners"; that is nevertheless sufficient to prop up the inflated prices of a few cult wines with a relatively tiny production.

So how on earth does this ";most"; relate to the (obviously minute) proportion of the population who can even contemplate buying wine of this price?

That is precisely my point. I don’t profess to be an expert in the domestic Spanish wine market, but it is safe to say that MOST young, and not so young, Madrileños and Barcelonans with an interest in wine primarily are not buying these cult wines.

Likewise, contrary to her assertion, I don’t think MOST only ";follow third party recommendations.";

And I doubt that MOST follow ";the same third parties [recommendations] at that.";

I’m not even sure that her characterization of Spain as a ";youthful wine market"; is accurate. (Certainly it can’t be viewed as a young market in the same way that the US, with no tradition of wine consumption, is a young market.)

Rather than try to bend her otherwise plain words into something that approximates reality, I dismiss them as a mere rhetorical device that simply does not stand up to scrutiny.