notbob wrote:
> Doug Freyburger > wrote:
>

>> For beers I'm happy to pay the much higher price for the very best, but
>> it's rare to find a bottle of beer/ale for over $20. Drinking only one
>> every week or so that sort of price on a beer doesn't bother me.
>
> They are out there. Samuel Adams $100 btl Utopia's. DogFishHead $12
> for 12 oz IPA 120. I once had a privately brewed barley wine that was
> $150 for a champagne sized bottle. Worth every cent. $10-20 for
> large btl is average price for Belgian beers.

I love blue label Chimay Cinq Cents in the $15-20 range for a 750 ml
bottle. I have a few per year nearly a quarter of the beer I drink at
home.

> I pay $6 for the
> occassional 8 oz btl of Duchess De Bourgogne (there's one to try!).

I tried the 750 ml bottle over the last weekend. It was much to sweet
for my tastes. Or maybe I should describe it as having citris tones not
just sweet? I get that it was very well crafted but it happened to
clash with my personal tastes.

Instead I had a Samual Smiths Cider. They make wonderful ales so it was
worth trying one of their ciders. It was delicious but there's less
various among ciders than there is among beers. Their ales stand out
more distinctly.

>Vodka cracks me up! The more you spend, the less
> flavor. That seems pretty dumb.

When I still lived in the college dorms we tried a blind tasting. Three
discount brands and three top shelf brands. No one could tell any of
the top shelf brands apart (this was before flavored vodkas. For that
matter one of the top shelf brands was Stoli from the Soviet Union). No
one could tell any of the discount brands apart. Only half could tell
the discount brands from the top shelfs brands, and that was neat and
side by side.

I get that we were college students in a dorm doing the tasting.
Experts would get different results. But those results were sure good
enough for my purposes. I never have to care among Finlandia, Absolute
or Gray Goose.