Is there a scientifically detectable difference between high-price liquor and regular stuff?

The Straight Dope ^ | January 3, 2014 | Cecil Adams

[Slings and Arrows]

Dear Cecil:

I was in the Costco liquor section when I happened upon a locked display case with three bottles inside (one whisky, one cognac, one I can’t remember), each priced upwards of $2,500. I imagine anyone who bought and drank one of these would be heavily influenced by "buyer's bias" regarding the actual taste of the product; still, I’d think the difference would be great enough that an average, uneducated drinker could pick out the ultra-expensive bottle from a $30 one in a blind test. What can science tell us about why an extremely high-quality and typically older alcohol would be so much more pleasant to drink, and thus much more valuable?

— Morton Christopher

Cecil replies:

Science can tell us plenty about booze, Mort. However, the relevant discipline shifts as we rise in the price scale. At the low end, where we’re talking about beverages commonly drunk from paper bags, chemistry can easily demonstrate what separates rotgut from the decent stuff. Above a certain point, however, we find more useful insight in psychology, if you take my meaning. The question is where that shift occurs. In bitter moments I tend to say it’s around ten bucks a bottle, although having had a tasty if somewhat pricey Chateauneuf-du-Pape the other night I can see where you might objectively demonstrate that $100 was money well spent. But $2,500? Sorry, this is prima facie evidence of the madness of crowds.

With the exception of pure ethanol, alcoholic beverages are complex mixtures of chemicals derived from the raw materials plus the containers they’re aged and stored in. Variations in taste generally arise from differences in volatile organic compounds (VOCs), which readily vaporize at room temp when the container is opened and give the brew, vintage, or what have you its characteristic smell — not the common term, particularly among wine enthusiasts, but let’s call a spade a spade.

The VOCs potentially found in alcoholic beverages make for a long list. Most of the terms mean nothing to the nonspecialist, but since you asked, here are some things you might detect if your man cave is equipped with a mass spectrometer:

• Proanthocyanidins, tannin colloids, and flavan-3-ols all contribute bitterness and astringency to wine.
• “Nuttiness,” considered a desirable quality in Scotch whisky, can often be traced to the presence of pyrazine compounds, whereas 2-furanmethanol imparts an aroma variously reminiscent of popcorn, earth, and feet.
• Phenols contribute peatiness to Scotch, and Scotches made from malt smoked over peat fires acquire phenolic traits so distinctive chemists can sometimes identify the original peat bog. When researchers analyzed 1890s Scotch recovered a few years ago from Ernest Shackleton’s Antarctic camp, its phenol profile was correctly traced to a bog in the Orkney Islands.

Still, while we know in a general way which VOCs are associated with what taste, that’s a long way from saying we can detail with any confidence the chemical differences separating an award-winning beverage from an OK one.

In many cases these differences are minute. For example, the subtle taste of “greenness” in a Sauvignon Blanc, an undesirable quality in other varieties of wine, arises from methoxypyrazine compounds, detectable by humans in the parts per trillion. It’s surely also true that taste is a result of the interplay between multiple VOCs, some of which chemists have yet to identify. The best means of judging quality, therefore, remains the human nose and palate.

These make for an imperfect instrument. Nowhere is this more evident than in the world of wine tasting:

• In 2005 judges at the California State Fair Wine Competition were unknowingly served certain wines three different times on different days. Individual tasters‘ scores for the same wine varied widely, in some cases from 87 points (nothing special) to 95 (primo).
• In a blind tasting, 54 students in the wine program at the University of Bordeaux were tricked into perceiving a white wine as a red simply by adding food coloring to it.
• Con man Rudy Kurniawan fooled wine experts from around the world with his counterfeits of rare wines made with cheap Napa Valley product and photocopied labels. He was finally tripped up when he tried to auction faux vintages dated decades before the wine in question was ever actually produced.

Does that mean alleged differences in alcoholic beverages are BS? Depends on what you consider differences. When nonprofessional tasters were trained to use a standardized whisky-tasting vocabulary and then given samples of 40 blended Scotch whiskies, their assessments generally corresponded with the four categories of whisky being tested (deluxe, standard, cheap, and West Highland). In a separate study, the four categories were themselves found to have distinctive chemical signatures. In other words, it was possible to sense broad variations in quality, and those variations had a chemical basis.

On the other hand, consistently distinguishing a presumably exquisite $2,500 bottle from a merely excellent $100 one … eh, maybe somebody with an unusually sensitive palate could do it. You or me? That I doubt.

— Cecil Adams

[jjotto]

Maximum alcohol achieved by distillation is a little over 95%, which is indeed what some Everclear is sold at. A lot of places require Everclear to contain no more than 75% or so alcohol.

My guess is that smoother tasting vodka actually contains more “impurities”, albeit of a controlled kind.

Fuel ethanol comes close to 100%, but at a very high engineering and energy cost. All of the “fusel oils” are returned to the fuel ethanol stream, as they make for acceptable fuel too.

[muir_redwoods]

Ya’ know, it could be your nose that’s aging. Just saying...

[Squantos]

My preferences as to drink......

Meyers Rum

Two Buck Chuck wine (Charles Shaw)

Tocai or Lambrusco house wines from the pordenone province of Italy

Buffalo Trace Bourbon

Home brew honey ale beer

Guinness Stout properly “Gustungled”

Once in a awesome steak house called St Elmo’s in Indianapolis back in 86 we had a hundred dollar steak dinner an a shot of brandy that was kept under lock and key behind the bar and was 50$ a .......shot. 1986. I think it was a Courvoisier’s product. Our boss bought the four of us a shot. I would not have paid that for such.

Stay safe !!!

[Ouderkirk]

It is not at all controversial.

It is simply a matter of subjective taste preference.

Honestly....Jim Beam, Wild Turkey, Jack Daniels, Maker’s Mark, Canadian Club, Segram’s Seven, Segram’s VO, versus, some no-name distiller of whiskey. It all has a similar taste in basic form. It then becomes a matter of degree.

[bgill]

There isn’t much difference between a Picasso and a 5 year old’s refrigerator art except the price.

[bgill]

I can’t post what Popcorn Sutton’s footstone says but it’s brilliant. Wish I’d known him.

Radicchio is one of the most expensive salad green there is but tastes exactly the same as cheap escarole.

[KarlInOhio]

Mandrake, have you ever wondered why I drink only distilled water, or rain water, and only pure grain alcohol? It's because I just want to get hammered without worrying about whether the phenols, pyrazines or other organic compounds are the right ones.

[Cool_V]

I just recently stumbled across Buffalo Trace Bourbon. Really good stuff at a decent price point.

[Utah Binger]

Two points:

1) One of the large producers for Safeway and Lucky stores simply add distilled water to that 95% alcohol to bring it down to 80 proof.

2) The owners of that company were my neighbors in San Jose, CA. One night we all got together with several vodka "experts" for a blind taste test. Can't remember all the brands we used against the Safeway, however there were at least 8 or 9. In every case they picked the $3.99 bottle as the winner. Don't know exactly why but my thoughts were that the Safeway brand had not been flavored in any way.

An interesting side note: That same company opened a new distribution center in San Francisco and produced a new brand called Skyy Vodka. Exact same blend as the $3.99 stuff.

I enjoy Kamchatka as much as any of the high ends.

[LesbianThespianGymnasticMidget]

Currently Brittany filters contain ion exchange media. This filters out the ethanol. Takes out about 25% per pass.

You have to use just activated charcoal to not pull out a large % of the ethanol.

[Max in Utah]

One more objective difference between cheap and decent liquors is very important: the intensity of the hangover the next day, if you consume a lot.

I’ve noticed a difference between Cuervo and Patron in that respect. The better tequila doesn’t beat you up as badly.

I had some Potter’s brand tequila at a Halloween party years ago that made November 1st a very bad day indeed.

[martin_fierro]

Science can tell us plenty about booze, Mort.

The next time you read Scientific American, count the sheer number of hootch ads.

[suijuris]

Least expensive “clean” filtered vodkas would be Absolut, Pinnacle, Svedka, maybe Sky.

The cleanest vodka available is New Amsterdam. It is also the cheapest. The other are not even close. New Amsterdam has 0 impurities and 0 additives except for purified water to cut it to 80 proof. Virtually all other vodkas have some type of flavor or anti-flavor additives to cut the burn and any undesired flavors or smells. In my neck of the woods you can find it for as low as $11.99 a fifth. The taste and the smell are the cleanest you will ever experience.

[jjotto]

hehe

Fuel ethanol costs around $2.00-2.50 per GALLON to produce.

Add taxes around $25.00 per gallon for 95% alcohol for drinking and it’s easy to figure the bottom price for legal booze.

The idea that expensive vodka has some kind of expensive filtering that justifies the cost is just B.S. They may add something to the ethanol though.

[SamAdams76]

The important thing is acquiring a taste that is in line with your income. When I was young and poor, I learned to tolerate swill like Seagrams 7 Crown and Budweiser. If I had wine in the house, it was those gallon jugs with the little handle near the top just big enough to put your finger through.

The price of your booze should always be relative to your income. Acquiring a taste beyond your means can be a road to ruin!

These days, I tend towards microbrew beers or quality beers like Samuel Smith's Porter, Sam Adams or a Pilsner Urquell if I want something lighter and more thirst-quenching. I keep some top shelf scotch around like Glenfiddich and Johnnie Walker. As for wine, I stay around the $20-25 a bottle price range but rarely below $15.

On occasion I will have something more expensive but I think there are diminishing returns once you move up the price scale. While a $25 bottle of wine should be at least 10x better than the cheapest bottles in the store, a $100 bottle of wine might only be twice as good as that $25 bottle.

A couple years back I splurged and got Dom Perignon champagne for New Year's Eve. Set me back $90 a bottle. The next year I went back to Moet & Chandon ($30) because I just didn't think that Dom Perignon was three times better. Maybe 1.5 times better but definitely not 3x better.

[LesbianThespianGymnasticMidget]

Britta = Brittany

Damned autocorrect.

[loungitude]

I understand that Everclear is almost 100% ethyl Alcohol, could this be used (obviously in smaller quantities) as a substitute for high dollar vodka? I’m assuming that it has had more impurities removed to distil it to this proof.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

All vodka starts off as near-100% ethanol, and is diluted with water to about 40% or so. As has been discussed, it’s the small amounts of impurities that give different vodkas their good or bad qualities. So, yes you can mix Everclear and water and make vodka. However, don’t expect it to taste great.

[RegulatorCountry]

That’s it, metallic label that looks sort of like burnished copper.

[RegulatorCountry]

I’m at the mercy of state-run liquor stores here, which limits availability. They’ve expanded their offerings considerably over the past decade or so, but there’s still a lack of the apparent variety offered in states that allow retailers to sell liquor. Wine and beer are all that’s available through retailers, and even that is limited by alcohol content.

[ZirconEncrustedTweezers]

Thunderbird? The American Classic? HA!! Not THAT Thunderbird.

This one, on the other hand...