To ask or not to ask?

Here’s the scenario: you’re at a friend’s house having a glass of their wine and think its great and you wonder how much it is – do you ask? To me, how much a wine costs is a direct relationship to how much I like it. Loving a wine that’s its $60 a bottle or loving a wine that’s $10 a bottle will inspire two very different reactions – the latter being “do not pass go”, go directly to the wine shop and buy this wine!!!

But is it rude to ask? I mean, what if their wine is a great value and thus is less costly than yours? Will they be embarrassed to tell the truth? What if there is more than yours? Will you offer up your price? Would you lie? Would you launch into a long discussion about why you grabbed it? Maybe make it up to them next time by bringing something more expensive? Does all this cause a panic and so you just forget it and hope your not so photographic memory will work after a few glasses of wine only to be disappointed when you stroll into a wine shop and find that the random things you remember happen to be on 15 other similar wines?

Well, I like to think that among wine friends we all understand that we will bring wine of slightly varying price ranges and will try to make it up to each other at the next outing. I don’t mind if someone asks me how much a bottle is, particularly if its something they haven’t seen here. (which happens somewhat often, since I order things through wine clubs) After a while, the price of wine you bring to a friends house will settle into a standard Tuesday night range and a Saturday night range, (likely cheaper on Tuesday) so don’t stress too much about it.

When it comes to asking, here’s my thoughts: while everybody likes to discover a good deal, most people don’t want to find that good deal when they brought a wine that’s $20+ more. I do normally ask, not only because I want to know for personal re-purchase reasons, but because I personally try to even it out in some manner. For example, at dinner with friends not too long ago they brought a more expensive bottle than we did. We insisted on giving them “our portion” of the difference – even though they insisted it wasn’t necessary. While the wine I brought was indeed a great deal and tasted a caliber or two above the price, I don’t want to take advantage of the fact they happened to have some nicer wines in their cellar.

Possibly I worry about this sort of stuff too much, but my thoughts are that good wine and good friends are both hard to come by, so why mess up either one??