Some friends had my wife and I over for dinner this past weekend. They cooked French food from a classic Julia Child cookbook, and we sampled wines from Sonoma Valley, California and Burgundy, France.
It was a great time, made even better by the stories that came along with the wine. We had recently visited the winemaker who produced the California wine with the friends who had us over that evening, so we reminisced about that weekend and some of our other trips up to Wine Country. Our friends then told us about the French wine, which they had picked up last month on a trip to Paris and Burgundy.
Living in the Bay Area, so close to the Napa and Sonoma Valleys, we’re pretty regularly exposed to wines and wine collectors. Most of the wine sold directly by smaller winemakers around here is fairly expensive by my standards. A bottle of white wine in Sonoma or Napa generally runs between $25 and $40, and a bottle of red will set you back $30 to $50 or more.
That’s a far cry from the $8 to $10 my wife or I would typically spend on a bottle from Trader Joe’s or the local market. That difference got me thinking this weekend. Can I taste the difference between cheap and expensive wine? Can anybody really tell the difference?
