Ultimately What’s Worth Paying for?

I ran across a social media post while doom scrolling the other night. It promised to help me: “Drink Like a Whiskey Expert.”

My id responded immediately with: “That sounds miserable,” but I’m not one for negative comments these days. I kept scrolling.

Not that I have an issue with expertise, mind you. I’m just weary of people who consider themselves experts. Most of them have something to prove. Few of them are fun company, especially in the wine and spirits industry where people often want to be experts without context.

Often times, this type of expertise ends up alienating consumers instead of engaging them.

Let’s get Socratic. I’m going to ask you a few questions:

• If some guy online has tasted through thousands of whiskies, does that mean he’s an expert?

• If expertise is simply experience, how do we know his experience is relevant to ours?

• If experience is the end game, then where does context fit in?

I’m a pretty big horror movie fan and have been since I was about four years old. If someone tells me they think When Evil Lurks is an amazing film, I’m wholeheartedly going to agree. But in order to relate to their experience, I’m going to need some context. What other films have they enjoyed?

If the answer is Hereditary, It Follows, and Jeepers Creepers, then I’ve likely found someone whose experiences mirror my own. I love those three films with a passion.

If the answer is The Devil’s Rejects, Saw, and Terrifier, then I’m going to be weary about our shared experience even though we seem to agree about that one film. I strongly dislike those three other movies.

Simply reading about someone else’s opinions, experiences, and summations without some level of context isn’t all that interesting to me because I’ve learned over time that people can agree without any real understanding as to why. As a consumer, what I really want to know is: what’s worth paying for?

Not: would you pay for that particular whiskey personally?

But rather: do you understand why that whiskey costs what it does?

In order to comprehend what is and isn’t worth paying for, you need more than just experience. You need an understanding of what constitutes quality for that particular product or genre. You also need an understanding of industry economics, what things cost, and how those things are made. In other words, you need context.

Let’s take couture fashion as an example.

Is a black cotton Louis Vuitton T-shirt worth $200? Probably not. I’m guessing that I can probably find countless T-shirts of a similar quality that look just as good for about $20. In this instance, what you’re paying for is the LV logo.

But what about a $1000 Louis Vuitton sequin dress? That’s a completely different story. Considering each sequin was probably sewn on by hand, resulting in countless hours of stitching per dress, it very well could be worth $1000. You would need to understand that very important detail before discounting it as overpriced or inflated in cost.

Knowing how something is made is extremely important to any sort of assessment, but for the consumer reading these reviews the question comes down to: is that level of detail worth paying for from their perspective?

Just because something is rare or expensive to make doesn’t mean I’m going to pay for it. I may appreciate it and still prefer to spend my money elsewhere. It all depends on what personally interests me.

And it’s this point in particular where I feel the appreciation of wine and spirits has taken a sharp left turn over the last decade for the sake of brevity and clicks. Most reviews that I read nowadays are focused on flavor, depth, and character, but provide little context other than personal opinion. Yet, there are many motivators beyond flavor for drinkers today.

For example, you may want to try a certain expensive Bordeaux because you’re a history buff and you read that Thomas Jefferson preferred this particular French wine.

Maybe you’re a music fan and your favorite artist favors a certain whiskey, so you want to check it out.

Or perhaps you’ve read an unbelievable amount of hype concerning a very rare and expensive bottle and want to know for yourself if all the attention was deserved or not.

At the end of the day, many of us are willing to pay for an experience that transcends our taste buds, moves beyond all merit, and extends into the psyche of our pop culture particulars. Where does that phenomenon come into play when writing a review? Does the reviewer understand what’s motivating the average end consumer before coming to a conclusion?

I’ve always been someone willing to pay for the experience of knowing whether something was or wasn’t worth paying for. There’s an obvious irony to that logic, but ultimately I walk away with insight when I combine that experience with context, history, production insight, and previous lessons learned.

When it comes to wine and whiskey, I’ve spent the last twenty years traveling the world and tasting samples from just about everywhere. Because of that context, I’m able to separate the products I love personally from an expected standard of quality within each category. Understanding what constitutes merit versus what simply tastes good is an important distinction and one that I value above all else.

Despite all this, I would never define myself as a wine or whiskey expert. To paraphrase Liam Neeson in Taken, what I do have is a particular set of skills. Having worked on the retail, distribution, import, and production side of the business over the last two decades, there’s one summation that I hold above all else. It isn’t a numerical score and it isn’t a letter grade. It’s very simple: based on everything I know, is this bottle worth what they’re charging?

To determine that, I have to look at everything: flavor, production methods, a comparison to other similar products in the market, history, philosophy, value systems, the broader category as a whole, and—of course—the price.

-David Driscoll