I will admit, that when I was in college in the mid-to-late-90s and craft beers started hitting the scene years after Sam Adams made a pretty good inroad into mainstream national markets that I just didn’t understand why anybody would drink macrolagers. I don’t think I ever teased anyone about it – but it took me a few years to understand that all the various beers have their places. I am/was an Old Style man when it came to just throwing back a few drinks on a hot day, or if I was in a neighborhood working class bar in Chicago where asking for something even like a Sam Adams might get you punched in the nose or odd looks. Nowadays, I feel like the bar scene is a lot more diversified, and a much wider range of drinks is the norm. So no biggie if you want a Lagunitas; no judgmental looks if all you want a Miller. Or maybe I’m just oblivious.
I think this portion of the OP is a key point, which is immediately dropped in the next sentence.
Basically the whole 100x price thing is (IMHO) a distraction from the question about “connoisseur culture”. Of course there are other MJ / Caffeine / Nicotine Snobs that argue the various merits and costs of the delivery mechanism. But very few have the historical cachet of super-rich snobs that pay absolutely silly sums for bragging rights for conspicuous consumption reasons.
It came up in one of our other threads recently, but I’d argue that super high end wines are veblen goods, that their scarcity, cost, and inherent consumption drives their value despite the fact that almost all of the ‘best’ experts cannot consistently identify or differentiate those top goods.
I disagree as I think it’s that kind of thing that distinguishes booze connoisseur culture from other things. There are plenty of things you can be a connoisseur about, but not many where you can say thing A is worth 2 dollars and thing B which is basically all but indistinguishable is worth 200 dollars.
You might be able to find a 100 dollar burger at a fancy restaurant, versus a 10 dollar drive thru burger, but you won’t find a 1000 dollar burger. Whereas you won’t even have to go to the absolute fanciest restaurant to find a bottle of wine worth 100x more than the cheapest bottle at the cheap liquor store around the corner.
You must have known some smart ass would have to dispute this when you typed it…
Definitely dwarfed, by quite a bit. We did go on an all day tour that included a visit to a cannabis farm and a winery. We could have gone on an all-day tour that included multiple farms, but we decided to do a bit of both. The cannabis farm was a single person operation who follows regenerative farming practices, and grows other plants within the same garden (polyculture gardening).
This was in Humboldt County, that has a long history of cannabis growing, so we learned a lot about the California laws and history. But even there, there are a lot of restrictions, as cannabis does not have the acceptance level of tobacco and alcohol. Nobody under 21, so nothing for children.
Search for small batch cannabis for your legal locale, and you will find something, as there are certainly a number of cannibis connoisseurs.
Even the brewery and distillery tours are a relatively recent development, so I expect it will be quite some time, perhaps decades, before cannabis, reaches the same level of tourism.
Article about Whiskey tourism in Kentucky and Tennessee for reference:
Alcohol has a different dimension of snobbery because of the scarcity imposed by the requirements of aging and (in some cases) the type of land and preparation of vines.
Although weed marketers are doing everything they can to heighten a sense of distinction between strains, ultimately weed is a flowering annual that grows almost anywhere, and richly rewards even small amounts of attention and care in cultivation. Also, being an illegal product, it’s not possible to patent different strains of weed (AFAIK). So although that puts an upper bound on scarcity, do not discount the amount of snobbery that people invest in their $400/oz bags of weed.
Don’t drop the brown acid, man.
I don’t dispute that this is possible, but I would point out that everyone has their own individual tastes, and one’s personal preference doesn’t constitute a “culture”. Beer culture doesn’t claim to be centered around alcohol, but all you have to do is attend a tasting event and see that generally all the beers on offer are alcoholic. It’s because NA beer is overwhelmingly the choice of people who have a taste for beer but have to avoid alcohol.
I would raise the question of whether you’d have loved those same qualities about beer if they hadn’t been reinforced by the drug experience. Don’t get me wrong, I love the taste of beer and I’m thrilled that they now have craft NA beers that are tolerable substitutes for normal beer. But I’m no illusions as to how and why I learned to love the taste of rotten grain.
As mentioned above, I would suggest this is in fact because grain spirits are universally shit-tasting beverages. Without alcohol, Scotch is smoke-flavored water, bourbon is watered-down unsweetened maple syrup. There’s no way that can ever be a good beverage in itself. Without alcohol, even the motivated reasoning occasioned by a $10,000/bottle prestige price couldn’t overcome that kind of weird and unremarkable taste profile.
Not that I’m against drugs, or beer, or people enjoying a good-tasting drug like beer. I just feel like for harm reduction purposes, people should have a clear & honest understanding that the preference for alcohol is mainly underpinned by the drug experience.
Yes, I do believe at least eventually there was a feedback loop of sorts. I’ve liked the taste of non-alcoholic malt beverages (like malta, and there’s this Polish one, too) and bitter herbal teas (like wormwood) or sodas (like quinine), since I was a kid. Or even more recently Moxie, which I don’t particularly find bitter, but people talk about it like a vile substance. So malt + bitter botanical was kind of a natural pairing for me. I used to love sipping Old Style from my dad’s can of beer as a five-year-old because I loved the taste, and obviously not in amounts enough to get me the least intoxicated. But, sure, I eventually discovered the alcoholic and social aspect of it, and the two eventually must have reinforced each other. Thankfully, these days, there are a good number of NA beers that I would take over alcoholic beers because they just taste better.
I loved the smell of coffee before i was allowed to drink it.
Alcohol is used to carry flavors. All the flavors extracts in my cupboard (vanilla, orange, mint, several others) are alcohol based.
I’m sure the fascination with wine is related to the drug in it, but i also think that most wine tastes delicious. (Except for the wine that tastes like fruit rot, which is not that uncommon. I don’t like those ones.)
I once had a summer job working as an student engineer. It involved some academic skills as well as building stuff, but there were technicians available to help me. One of the technicians was particularly useless but extremely good at soldering things. He seldom talked about anything else, and had little good to say about other people’s soldering abilities. It made me wonder what the smallest area or talent was for which one could self-identify and constantly claim condescending expertise.
If there is profit to be made, there is usually branding and claims false and true. I don’t know much about drug culture but I bet these claims of connoisseurship and elevated quality are made for the majority of drug types, especially when identification of the source does not carry harsh penalties. Any doctor hears drug reps make these claims pretty often.
The areas of alcohol once least affected by these “improvements” - gin, vodka, mezcal (outside of Mexico); coffee, tea, tobacco and its every variation… even bottled water… have now long been affected. If you believe Tom Wolfe, the original designers of many drugs also had special status.
Anecdote time.
I stood watching an engineer dab away at a home project one time until I couldn’t stand it any longer, said, “Gimmie dat!” and had it done in less than two minutes with no cold joints. He said, “You technicians are so good at that.”
I replied, "We can’t get by on brains so we have to rely on physical skills. Anyway, if you think I’m good, go watch the rework ladies for a bit.
Yes, the legal pot market is definitely developing a “high-end” market for the most gorgeously manicured buds. But there’s certainly not a 100:1 ratio. Actually, aside from wine and spirits, I can’t think of ANY consumer products where it would be typical to find two functionally identical products in the same store with that big a gap between the “basic” and “connoisseur” price level. Maybe cosmetics, I don’t know much about that.
Speaking as someone with a fair amount of knowledge regarding the old school psychedelics, I recall there was a difference in that some blotter/microdot hits had stronger doses of LSD on them, were fresher or otherwise than the other available varieties, etc. And windowpane was almost always somewhat costlier and considerably more potent than “dots and blots”. Like, a paper hit of Skull And Roses or Flying Eyeballs blotter probably contained about 100 micrograms of LSD, while a piece of 'pane might run to 200 mics or more. But other than the amount of micrograms per hit, a dose of acid was a dose of acid, there’s not a lot of qualitative difference among the “brands” unless someone was ripping people off (by selling them PCP as real LSD, for example).
This is a thing that people said, but how do you know it was true? Even if there really was one guy in his basement lab trying very hard to make windowpane exactly the same every time, what’s the assurance that your supply came from that guy and not 100 other knockoff artists?
Since LSD is an illegal substance with no quality control, there’s no real way to know if any of it is true. It’s just stuff people chat about while they’re selling or using to explain what they’re selling or how they’re feeling.
(My story wasn’t personal. At that time, I had plenty of practice with circuit boards and my soldering skills were above average. I even received faint praise from The Grand Pajandrum himself. “Better’n most.”
But the point was not to belittle anyone who makes the most of their talents. It was more a question of perspective and attitude. This certainly applies to engineers I know.)
And again, I call Bullshit. If it was all about the drug, then nobody would ever bother with anything but Everclear or its analogs. Denying that beer, wine and spirits can be enjoyed, savored and contemplated on the basis of flavors and such is just as wrong as denying that people enjoy a buzz. It’s hard-wired. If you get off “knowing” that all of us who appreciate fine wines, spirits and fermented goods are just degenerate drunkards chasing the next high, fine. Seems like a lousy way to live your life, but you do you.
BTW, Christmas dinner this year was at Bouchon, where we had the wine parings with each course. The 2017 Margaux went perfectly with the braised short rib. Ditto the 2019 Sauternes with dessert.
This is unsound logic. Straight ethanol tastes horrible, and this is why it’s usually consumed mixed with something that doesn’t taste horrible. The variety of such mixtures is testament to the need to overcome the taste to get the drug’s effects.
Then it’s a good thing that’s not what I said. What I did say is that the drug entrains people to associate pleasure with sensory experiences that would normally be unremarkable or even unpleasant. That’s how drugs work! Seeking repeat positive drug experiences is as hardwired as any human bevavior (if not more so).
I never once said or implied any of that. I’m stating the plain physiological fact that a lot of alcohol “connoisseur” behavior is mediated by the drug. And I’m not saying it with any note of judgment or condemnation, either. If you’re not harming yourself or others, enjoy your habits with my blessing.
But I would point out that the same people who get angry about this observation tend to be the same people who get angry at the observation that wine snobs generally can’t tell the difference between fancy wine and mass-market wine in a blind taste tests. It does offend one’s sense of sophistication and discernment, especially if they have a lot invested in it.
I think nicotine (in the form of cigars) is very much in the running:
There isn’t a Kobe Beef of vegan meats or a Bluefin Tuna of vegan seafood either but that doesn’t suggest that meat is just a drug. The default state of any industry is that there isn’t a high end market with crazy prices, only a few select industries have the right intersection of properties to support that sort of conspicuous consumption. The NA beer market is slowly developing it and might eventually get there over time.