The Cost Of Wine

It was going to be one of my lazy sleep-in days today, the kind of day where I would lay in bed until sometime in the mid-afternoon, where Katherine would bring me coffee and lunch, where I would do nothing but nap and rest for the whole of it. I knew that we were expecting company sometime in the afternoon; my thought was that they might arrive at around 3:00 or 4:00 PM.

Then my phone rang. It was 1:45 PM. Katherine announced to me that our company was going to be at my place at 2:00 PM, and I needed to get up and get dressed immediately. Now, doing anything "immediately" for me is an unlikely possibility. However I did dress as quickly as I could, skipping my normal bathroom routine, just a quick toothbrush and my medications. But I was ready when they called to get in, ready when the phone rang for the front door.

Cindy and Daniel are friends of Katherine's. They are a lovely, funny couple, about our age. He is an engineer with the local power company; she is an at home Mom, although the home is now empty of children. Katherine had mentioned that I make wine. Daniel and Cindy had said they tried it once but it turned out badly. One thing lead to another, and they started coming over a few weeks back to go through the process of making a couple of batches of wine, with appropriate guidance and supervision.

I hear this a lot, people making wine and it turning out badly. I asked Daniel about his first experience and he said "We didn't want to spend a lot for our first experiment." For me, making wine is no experiment. It's a precise bit of chemistry and natural magic. But their experience is something else I hear a lot, people buying cheap wine kits and not liking the wine. The other two killers in this process are not following the instructions precisely, and not being absolutely scrupulous about sterilizing things and keeping them clean.

As with so many things, you cannot get good wine from a cheap wine kit. Cheap kits give you cheap wine, expensive kits give you good wine. It's no major challenge. Yet it happens so often. People are afraid of the process, so they buy cheap in case it doesn't work. Then they wonder why the wine tastes so bad.

There are so many things in life that are like that, where we put in a minimum of effort and yet complain when we get a minimum of results. There are very few things in life where you get your best results when you put in your poorest effort. There are very few things you can purchase where a lower price does not mean lower quality.

I am not a fan of spending money on something without getting what I want, but I know that there is a price to everything, and a cost for everything. I know that if I try to cheap out, I will get cheap results. I also know that it's often better to spend a bit more, and to get a bit less, with higher quality. I understand that relationship, especially when it comes to wine.