Wine & Money

An article in today's Dining section of the Times talks about whether enjoyment of wine is affected by outside factors such as the circumstances in which you drink it, or knowing how much it cost.

The researchers scanned the brains of 21 volunteer wine novices as they administered tiny tastes of wine, measuring sensations in the medial orbitofrontal cortex, the part of the brain where flavor responses apparently register. The subjects were told only the price of the wines. Without their knowledge, they tasted one wine twice, and were given two different prices for that wine. Invariably they preferred the one they thought was more expensive.

“Forget those blurbs about bouquets, body and berries,” one newspaper account crowed. “A meticulous new study found that the more people think a wine cost, the more they like it. And the less they think it cost, the less they like it.”

Big surprise. Sommeliers all over know that the hardest wine to sell in a restaurant is the cheapest bottle on the list. “Yeah, clients don’t want to be embarrassed in front of a date, so they don’t order the cheapest wines,” said Fred Dexheimer, the wine director of the BLT restaurant group. The fact is, the correlation between price and quality is so powerful that it affects not just our perception of wine but of all consumer goods.

Studies like this seem to come up every so often, so this is no big surprise. But what these studies have never taken into account, as far as I know, is the subjects' attitudes towards money. I think that a frugal-minded personal finance blogger might be more likely to enjoy a cheap wine just because it's cheap. I know I can be this way-- sometimes I probably like things just because I am so happy I got a bargain when buying them. Someone who really values saving money might not enjoy an expensive wine just because they want to believe that a cheap one is just as good.
On the other hand, someone who is very focused on attaining wealth and luxury goods and projecting a certain image of their financial status might be more likely to enjoy an expensive wine, because they believe expensive things should be better, and because they want to feel like their hard-earned money is buying them the kind of rewards they deserve. After all, if expensive things aren't better, there's no value to being rich, right?

Obviously, the answer is for some researchers to set up a study comparing the wine tastes of personal finance bloggers to those of the rest of the population at large. I hereby volunteer to be your first guinea pig!

A Dinner with Friends

I went out the other night with 3 college friends:

Annabelle was visiting from out of town. She was just made a Vice President at a Silicon Valley company and though she totally downplays any sign of material success, I think she must make a lot of money.

Beatrice and Charlotte both live here in NYC. They are both involved in theater: one has a day job to support herself, and the other is currently living off some grant money.

Charlotte picked the restaurant, a cute Italian place in Hell's Kitchen. I figured she would pick something reasonably priced but it turned out to be rather pricey-- appetizers and salads were over $10, and pasta dishes were $13-18 for portions that were not skimpy, but not large enough to share either. The wine list didn't have many choices under $30.

We had a nice dinner: Beatrice and Charlotte just had an entrée each-- actually Charlotte had half an entrée, since she took the rest home in a doggie bag. Annabelle and I split a salad to start. All four of us shared one bottle of wine. (I know, this sounds shocking for me! When we were ordering I originally proposed we get a bottle each of red and white, but no one else seemed to like that idea, so I just nursed my one large glass...) We all split 2 desserts, I had a coffee, and Annabelle and Charlotte each had a brandy. I definitely felt like Annabelle and I were more inclined to just order whatever we felt like having, whereas Beatrice and Charlotte were being more careful.

When the bill came, it was about $180 before tip. We all took out our wallets and started trying to figure out the tip, when Annabelle said, "I should pay for this," saying she'd come into town and invited us all out at the last minute. We all of course protested, saying that was a silly reason for her to think she should pay. Then I semi-jokingly added, "Unless you're expensing it!" We joked about her new Vice Presidency for a minute, and she said, "Hey, yeah, I've been telling you about my company all night and you're all going to check out our website, right? I should expense it!" At that, Beatrice and Charlotte said "Whoo-hoo, thanks!" I said "Are you sure?" Annabelle insisted it was no problem so I let it go and thanked her too. But I suspect that she may have actually used a personal credit card to pay for it anyway!

Anyway, I guess I just found it interesting to see how different people seem to deal with accepting the generosity of a friend. Sometimes it seems awkward to accept, and sometimes when you know the person wants to be generous, and can afford to be generous, you can just relax and enjoy it, especially if it eases your own money worries a bit!

Compete or Cooperate?

One of my favorite restaurants in New York, if not THE favorite, is Pearl Oyster Bar. The lobster roll there would probably be what I'd ask for if I had to request a last meal before dying. A lot of other people feel the same way, so it's a very popular restaurant. There is always a line outside the door before they open at 6pm, and since they don't take reservations, chances are you'll have to wait a while before getting a table.
Across the street from Pearl, there is another restaurant called the Cornelia Street Cafe. You'd think they would be considered the competition, right? But no... the two restaurants actually manage to do each other a lot of good. When people are waiting for a table at Pearl, the hostess says they can go and have a drink at Cornelia while they are waiting, and that she'll come and get them when their table is ready. Meanwhile, at Cornelia, if the bar is full, they'll seat you at a table for just drinks if they know you're waiting for Pearl. And lest you should worry that you won't have time to finish a drink or two, they tell you that you can take your unfinished drink with you over to Pearl, who will know to return the glasses. (Never mind that walking across the street with a drink is actually illegal in New York!)
Anyway, I just love this little arrangement. Everyone's happy, and everyone makes money. Well, the restaurant owners are making it, while the happy drinkers and diners are spending it! The tab for 4 people: $40 for drinks at Cornelia, and about $225 for dinner at Pearl. But the taste of that lobster roll, of course, is priceless.

$800 a Month on Food = Obese??

An anonymous commenter questions my food spending and whether I'm obese... for the record, as I'm writing this I am wearing a pair of size 4 pants. I'll admit that I might be somewhat more comfortable in a pair of size 6 pants, or even an 8, depending on the brand, but this post is about food, not clothes, so let's move on. How can someone like me with a normal caloric intake spend $800 a month on food sometimes? (Also for the record, no bulimia issues here. That is one way in which it is really a shame to have money go down the toilet.)

Let's take a closer look at my spending, starting with a recent credit card statement, covering 8/25-9/25/07:
I made 5 trips to local supermarkets, totaling about $146 overall. I bought pasta (on sale), Sapporo beer, Gatorade (on sale), broccoli, prunes, maple syrup, peanut butter, bananas, shallots, garlic, chicken breasts, potatoes, tinned sardines, tomatoes, yogurts, apples, canned tuna, Clif bars, lettuce, lamb chops, and a steak. I also bought non-grocery items such as kleenex, dishwashing liquid, and laundry detergent.

I made 4 trips to upscale/gourmet markets (Whole Foods, Garden of Eden), where I spent a total of $40: $12 on fresh herbs, fancy mushrooms and heavy cream for a pasta dish I cooked for a guest, $7 on trout fillets and fresh spinach, $9 on trout fillets (again) and manchego cheese, and $12 on salmon fillets and apples.

Then there was the liquor store: 3 trips, $55, 6 bottles of wine.

That leaves the restaurants: 7 eat-in meals, and 2 take-outs. The whopping total on these? $605. This is an unusually high restaurant tab for me. One of these meals was when I bought dinner for my sister, her husband and two kids. A couple of the other restaurant meals were my share of a tab split evenly, and some were with a friend I go out with frequently enough that we alternate picking up the check. One of these meals was fairly expensive, a bit of a splurge with dessert and coffee. Usually, it's just an entrée each and 2 drinks each, and sometimes maybe a shared appetizer, in restaurants where the entrée prices range from about $12-22, and a glass of wine is $7 or $8.

So that was all the credit card spending. Then there's cash-- pretty much every weekday, I buy coffee and a bagel, or sometimes oatmeal, and a banana, costing me $3.25-$4.05, so that can be $80 or so a month. Then there's lunch, which can be $3.25 if I get pizza, $6 if I get a sandwich, $7.50 if I get a salad, or about $9.00 if I get sushi-- average it out and that can be over $100 a month, and I've been really bad about bringing lunches from home lately.

So you can see how a girl can easily spend $800 a month on food, or even more!

Contrast all of that with how I've been eating this week:

Monday:
Breakfast: coffee, banana and oatmeal for breakfast: $4.05
Lunch: cup o' soup from home, bought with coupon, so cost about $2, plus bagel $1
Dinner: chicken and rice with lemon sauce, and a salad: ingredient cost about $5 or $6. Washed down with a beer costing about $1.50.

Tuesday:
Breakfast: same
Lunch: same
Dinner: same but with sweet potato instead of rice, cost about the same. Again, $1.50 beer.

Wednesday:
Breakfast: coffee, banana and bagel: $3.25
Lunch: just soup this time, no bagel. about $2
Dinner: pasta and frozen spinach, cost of ingredients $2-3, with about $6 worth of wine.

Today I'm having the usual breakfast, lunch will be a business expense, and for dinner I might have a frozen Trader Joe's quiche or perhaps buy some fish, so the cost will probably be under $10, not including any alcoholic enhancement. If I ate like this every week, I'd be in great shape financially, but the reality of life is that I also like to go out and I'm willing to budget for that.

But enough about me... here's a question that I'd love to see some data on: who spends more money on food, obese people or skinny people?

Smirnoff Vodka Water???

While riding in my TV-screen & GPS-equipped taxi, one of the advertisements I noticed was one for a new beverage called Smirnoff Source. I had to google it when I got home, because I couldn't quite believe the ad was for real: it's bottled water with alcohol in it. Huh???
Here's a post about it on Jezebel and here's the press release. At first I thought it was water with vodka in it, but it's actually considered a "malt beverage:"

Smirnoff Source(TM), the new premium malt beverage offering from Diageo North America that combines pure spring water with alcohol is now on beer retailers' shelves and high-end bars throughout the Northeast. At 3.5 percent alcohol by volume (ABV), this new premium malt beverage, with a hint of citrus, has fewer calories and lower alcohol by volume than most popular domestic beers.

Who's the marketing genius that came up with this? "Hmm, will people buy watered-down alcohol if we say it's watered down with pure spring water and put it in a fancy bottle?" I wonder if this product will actually be successful!

Booze Your Way to Business Success

Here's an interesting stat from the latest issue of Women's Health magazine:

Women who belly up to the bar make 14 percent more money than women who don't.

A survey of 6,050 full-time workers found that the mean annual income for female drinkers was $17,216 vs. $13,982 for those who did not drink. Neither of those sounds all that great, so I wonder what kind of workers they surveyed.
The author of the study thought the reason for the difference was that "social drinkers have bigger social networks... and the more people you know, the more likely you are to find a better job or new clients."

I happened to read this item at a point when I had been thinking about my own spending on alcohol. In January 2006, I did a contest on this site where readers were invited to guess how much I spent on liquor-- the answer was about $1,006 for 2005-- $754 in my Dining:Liquor category, which is mostly bottles of wine purchased at a liquor store, plus an estimated additional amount for drinks in restaurants that were lumped into the Dining:Dinner category. How much did I spend in 2006? $1,059 in Dining:Liquor, plus maybe another $200 or so in restaurants.
This is one instance where understanding your finances can lead to understanding other things about your life-- it's probably not a good thing that I increased my drinking by 25%, for health reasons as well as financial ones! (And it was definitely an increase in consumption, not in the price range of what I was drinking.) I guess all that condo-buying/homelessness stress took its toll on me!! Anyway, cutting back on the sauce a bit is now one of my resolutions for the coming year. I just hope this doesn't mean my career will start heading downhill!

Wine Tips and an exciting CONTEST!!!

Sound Money Tips just posted some good pointers on shopping for wine. I have to qualify one of them: #6 says you shouldn't pour a half empty bottle down the drain. (Well of course not! What a shame that would be!) But rather than just corking up the bottle and putting it in the fridge, it's better to keep a few half-bottles (375ml) around the house and transfer it to one of those. That way there will be less air in the bottle with the wine, and it will keep better.

Now, for a bit of interactive fun, here's a contest for you! The photo above is of all the corks I have collected from approximately 5 1/2 years of home wine consumption. I tend to buy pretty cheap wines, usually under $10, maybe up to $15 for a special treat. So the question is, how much did I spend on liquor in 2005? You can post your guesses in the comments, and whoever comes closest to the actual number will receive a fabulous prize! I will post a special headline at the top of my blog that says "[your name here] is wicked awesome!" with a link to your blog*, if you have one, and I'll leave it there for one full week! Now I expect that the stampede of people trying to claim this incredible prize may temporarily overwhelm Blogger's servers, so if you can't get through right away, just keep trying and don't despair. Good luck, and may the best drunkard responsible drinker win!

*I reserve the right to reject any porn sites!