Edgy behavior in the wine world
One of my favorite blogs, Overcoming Bias, is a forum for people who seek to ask the right questions so as to “obtain beliefs closer to reality.” We all know how easy it is to be manipulated by the various facets of life in our society: media, politicians, and advertising being three vague and obvious examples.
Today, Robin Hanson, a tenured professor of economics at George Mason University, asked the following question.
In the art world something is “edgy” if it might well shock ordinary folks, but of course not in-the-know folks. The idea seems to be that ordinary folks are shocked too easily by things that should not really be shocking.
The opposite concept, which I’ll call “anti-edgy”, is of something that does not shock ordinary folks, but should. In-the-know folks are shocked, but most others are not. Why does the world of art and fashion emphasize the edgy so much more than the anti-edgy?
I am interested in applying this question and the potential answers to a world closer to me, wine. And so I open this to you, dear readers. What wines, wine labels, or even wine industry behaviours do you think are anti-edgy? I’ll try to think of an example as I sip my morning coffee.
March 6th, 2009 at 5:12 am
It is a shame that there are no comments for this post because this is a great question. Anti edgy wines to me include winemakers who have chosen to forgo AOC classification on their labels in exchange for Red Table Wine or somesuch unlegislated label. That’s a winemaker who says SCREW the “in-the-know” folks. If you’re an honest wine drinker and not just a snob, you’ll like this wine regardless of its label. That’s anti-edgy. Because a lay person doesn’t know that the winemaker even had an option of AOC / AVA / etc… or what AOC and AVA even stand for.