The best value bottle in the shop is usually from somewhere you cannot pronounce

You are not paying for the wine. You are paying for how many other people have heard of it.

Reputation is priced in. Two vineyards on the same slope, the same rock, the same weather, the same year: the one with the famous name on the gate will cost several times the one without, and the difference in the glass will not be several times anything.

That gap is where the interesting drinking is. Bierzo instead of the famous neighbour. Itata, planted in the fifteen hundreds, at the price of a supermarket Merlot. The Bekaa, which has been making wine for five thousand years and which almost nobody asks for.

None of this is a rule and none of it is a rebellion. It is simply that a name is the one part of a wine you cannot taste, and you are usually paying for it.

Unsigned draft. The scouts sign the reads they have written.