Value

I suppose that value, in the general sense, is a subjective thing.   I don't mean price, I mean the worth, the benefit that something offers, and what that represents to the individual.

My sister uses a lot of wine for cooking, and since we will be seeing her in England shortly, she asked us to bring from France all the wine that we are permitted, at no more than €2 a bottle.   It's getting harder to find drinkable wine at that price in France, but it can be done.

As it happened, we found ourselves in Laval recently, where there is a Noz, what the French would call a "hard discount" supermarket, that is, a cross between a low-end supermarket and a rummage sale.   We went in on a wine hunt.

One of the things about the French is that when it comes to wine, they tend not to drink "foreign rubbish".  This means that if you can find it, good quality non-french wine can be had at low prices.   So it turned out to be in our Noz, and we stocked up with 20 bottles of wine, portugese, italian, spanish, and some french, for about €37.50 in total.   There's a risk of some duds, of course, but it's good odds.

There was coincidentally, a wine tasting in our local bistrot the other day.   An independent producer, growing his own grapes (grenache) and making his own wine.   He told us about the different terroirs that he managed, and presented a bottle from each of three different areas, all growing the same grape variety.  The first we thought was a bit rough but as described; fruity with strong cherry notes.   The second was very pleasant, round and smooth, and the third was somewhere between the two.

Now any event in the bistrot tends to be a social affair, and after the first bottle was tasted, one of our locals decided that he wanted to buy a bottle and share it around.  Our vigneron refused to sell until he had finished his spiel and had everyone taste all three.   A small rebellion ensued and a bottle of supermarket bordeaux was opened and shared, stage left, while the tasting continued centre stage.   As you can imagine, there was an "atmosphere".

I have done some selling in a previous life, and I know that giving a spiel is easy, and closing a sale is difficult.  So when someone says, in effect, "shut up and take my money", that is exactly what you do.  Spieling can always continue later.

Anyway, the rougher wine turned out to be available at around €17 the bottle, while the stuff we liked was over €40.   I like to support the little guy and am prepared to pay a bit over the odds to help him along.  But there are limits, and I'm sure that the subtleties of a €44 bottle vs say, a €10 bottle are lost on me.   We didn't buy any.   And I'm sure my sister will get more pleasure out of 20 bottles from Noz that she would have from one bottle of grenache.