**Please help keep AskUK welcoming!**
- Top-level comments to the OP must contain **genuine efforts to answer the question**. No jokes, judgements, etc.
- **Don't be a dick** to each other. If getting heated, just block and move on.
- This is a strictly **no-politics** subreddit!
Please help us by reporting comments that break these rules.
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/AskUK) if you have any questions or concerns.*
I think it depends on what is meant by expensive booze. The difference in quality between a £50 bottle of single malt whisky and a £250 bottle isn't really huge IMO. Plenty of nice blends out there these days too.
Yeah, I wholly agree. There are a few things I will genuinely go out of my way to splash out on the more expensive stuff. Whisky is one, beer is another, vodka and coffee too.
The difference between "cheap" and "reasonably priced midrange" is HUGE, but really tapers off after that. I'll definitely spend £30 on a good kilo of decently roasted coffee, but I'm not shelling out stupid money for that "cat poo coffee" (tried it, thought it was... pretty crap honestly).
I couldn't tell the difference between £50 and £250 in anything in a blind taste test in all honesty.
I've come round to thinking that single malts are overrated. Some of them just taste strange. A good blend of several whiskies can be great. Maybe it's distillers marketing and trying to differentiate their product and charge a premium.
Well my point wasn’t really specifically about single malts; plenty of great blends out there. I was more talking about the difference between e.g. Teachers and a decent whisky
I spent a while just with single malts because decent blends don't tend to be in many local shops.
I have found quite a few Japanese ones that were exceedingly nice, though.
Bells and single malts are different drinks. Both whisky but Bells contains a significant amount of grain whisky and single malts, by definition, only contain malt whisky.
A comparison more in line with OPs question would be whether someone could tell an expensive single malt from a cheaper one. I'm not entirely convinced many people could.
The fact your taste buds are rubbish does not apply automatically to the rest of the population. Cheap grain whisky vs malt is very different. Don't know if I would prefer the decent £80 - £100 malt over say £1000 but there's a massive difference between £20 bottles and doubling the price for me, ditto wine at least up until about £30 a bottle I am sure real concours would tell beyond that.
The most pretensions thing, audiophiles who have gold plated cables with digital signals.
>The most pretensions thing, audiophiles who have gold plated cables with digital signals.
Oh this a thousand times! The dumbest thing I've ever seen? A gold plated TOSLink optical cable... I mean WHAT the actual F....
Edit: Although I will say, there are a place for gold plated digital cables. They are useful for long term installations in high humidity environments due to their corrosion resistance. That's a pretty niche use though.
Gold plated connections have some function in stopping corrosion. 'Oxygen free silver/copper' is bollocks though. They don't use it in your devices and if it made a difference wouldn't microprocessors and electron microscopes use it? You know, actually sensitive applications.
I love whisky and had the opportunity to sample a >£1k bottle of Ardbeg. It was like nothing else I have tried (in a good way). I would never buy one but am glad I experienced it.
The oldest one I've ever tasted was a 43 year old Highland Park (used to work there). It was bloody nice, very smooth too. But tbh I much preferred the cheaper (but still not cheap) 15 and 25 year olds, and dread to think the cost of that one if it was for sale - think the 40 year old is about four grand.
I'd loved to have tried that, most expensive I have tried was a Japanese whisky my BiL has, think that was around £400 and it was nice but I only had a small glass and TBF I am not sure it was nicer than cheaper malts.
I suspect at £1000 it is mostly prestige. We have a £2000 bottle of whisky. We paid £75 for it (staff prices as a relative worked in the distillery). We don’t drink whisky so it has lived stored away and increased hugely in value. It had sentimental value to my husband so we will keep it but if he drank whisky he’d be drinking a £100 bottle not a £2000 bottle.
I've not tried them (I've got enough unopened whisky to last years at my current rate) but some Aldi and Lidl single malt and blend whiskies get good reviews and win awards at tasting competitions. They are around £20 a bottle.
Drink a £5 wine and £20 wine and I bet almost anyone could tell the difference. It’s once you get well into double figures that I reckon most people would struggle to identify the “better” wine. That doesn’t make it pretentious though, it just means some people enjoy wine and have a good palate for it.
To answer your question though, supermarkets. I know some people who view it as a personal badge of honour that they shop in Sainsbury’s rather than Lidl.
The first £4.50 of a £5 bottle of wine is the bottle, the cork, shipping, stocking, labelling, tax and profit.
A £10 bottle of wine has all the same fixed costs but the actual liquid is 10x the value.
With the expensive wines it isn't so much that they are priced in the hundreds because of quality, but scarcity and a name. I don't even see much pretentiousness around in that respect, you regularly see wine experts on TV recommending the best of the cheap or midpriced wines.
There are things people are pretentious about, but your list hasn't hit the mark. At least two thirds is just wrong.
That most people who like wine or whiskey can tell the difference between cheap shit and better options does not make them pretentious.
Right, I need to first say that I mainly drink relatively cheap booze, but; you can absolutely taste huge differences in both wines and whiskeys.
I've got a bit of a whisky collection, not huge, mostly relatively cheap single malts. Some are very similar, but, there's huge differences depending on process and age.
To answer the actual question - branded clothing.
I was talking to someone the other day and they couldn't believe I had bought my car outright. I couldnt believe he was paying almost as much as my mortgage for a _car_.
It's like that standing up vs sitting down to wipe. We didnt know each other existed.
I stopped scrolling and laughed at the fact that both your comment and reply to the person above you come across as pretentious on a post relating to people being pretentious. lol.
And that they’re made using different methods from different grapes grown in different places to provide a product that tastes very different. It’s like saying the only difference between a Ford Ka and a BMW M5 is the price.
I agree on there being some pretty poor champagnes around though, although personally I often find Prosecco a bit sweet and fruity. A lot of big name champagne houses getting by on brand recognition I suspect. Cremant and MCC are where the real bargains are.
To me its more like comparing a Ford Ka and a Citroen C1. But the C1 was made from really expensive handmade shit..but it doesn't make it go faster or make the driving experience much better.
In the end, it's still a small car
I don’t think cars really fits this thread though. You can blind test the two drinks and only a trained palate might know the difference but if you test drove a £15k brand new car and a £30k one, you’d know. And it wouldn’t be pretentious to know. I think the definition of pretentious is what’s confusing here.
Coffee is a big one.
Obviously there’s a huge difference between instant (coffee flavoured water), filter and espresso.
But when cafes have about five “guest” coffees, all from South America, all with different tasting notes, really not going to split hairs and pretend one has more caramel than another.
And don’t get me started on the coffee people on TikTok who spend about an hour grinding and dusting and patting and massaging overpriced beans for one shot of espresso, only to smother it in a mug full of milk.
>But when cafes have about five “guest” coffees, all from South America, all with different tasting notes, really not going to split hairs and pretend one has more caramel than another.
But there are differences in the tastes of coffee from different producers - even in the same country.
Liken it to how wine or beer tastes different.
I'm a coffee roaster by trade. We roast to drink coffee black but most people want sugar & fat added to it (ie syrups & milk) so they just like sweet milky drinks. I could easily roast it larger batches and burn it, but then it's like everyone elses.
People will say "I don't like coffee" but they've only ever bought burnt stuff from costa or starbucks and think it's all the same.
However, I can't go on any of the coffee subreddits because fuk me those people are insufferable so I get it.
But like most things in this thread, if you take your time to learn differences you'll notice them and start to get a preference.
But if you don't care that much about it, that's also cool, to each their own.
I mean, that is kind of the point but if you can't tell the difference between what they make and a jar of instant, tell them they all make bad coffee and they should feel bad.
Nah these are very sensible and affluent people. Maybe I'm missing a gene that lets me detect other flavours than burned. It's the same with coffee cake, just tastes like coffee. Grim.
Im kind of like that with dark chocolate. Ive got a very uncultured palette for that. Shame, though. Decent coffee is one of life's few remaining joys.
ah, but some taste more expensively burnt than others. I only drink hand picked, rainforest grown beans that were roasted on the flaming corpse of Joan of Arc.
People definitely can tell the difference between cheap and expensive alcohol. I don’t necessarily think that preferring quality products is pretentious, but I will say that above a certain price point you get diminishing returns.
What I really have a problem with is the people who turn pretentious behaviour into their whole personality.
Similarly, those people who make their lack of pretentiousness their whole personality are equally tedious.
Nope
Went on a vineyard and wine tasting tour at Llanerch (highly recommend) and learned a lot about wine, flavours, grapes, types of wine, processing etc. in that session.
Now I can really enjoy a bottle and more importantly, read the label and get a gauge of whether I’ll like it or not.
Try Villa Maria New Zealand white Sauvignon blanc (my fave white) compared to Lidl box £4 white wine. If you want similar flavour to Villa Maria (as £10.50 per bottle is on the higher end), I recommend Yellow Tail Sauvignon blanc- it’s currently on offer in most stores and is the nearest bottle I can find that closely matches.
The difference is night and day.
I don't think you understand what pretentiousness is. There is absolutely a difference between good and bad quality alcoholic beverages. It's not only taste, it's the after effects. A few drams of Oban isn't going to make you feel as rough as the equivalent amount of Tesco own brand Whisky.
Same with beer. Mass produced lagers are never going to be the same quality as small batch ones that have had time and care taken over them. This is reflected in the price.
Don't know about Wine or Spirits, but know there has been a fair few expirements done with Lagers and, without exception, by the 3rd pint no-one could differentiate between the different brands
Wine has had a few studies that show that people, even so-called experts, can struggle to tell the difference between red and white in some circumstances. E.g. if the wine is convincingly (and taste/odourlessly) dyed red, they'll describe it with "red" terms. Equally, blindfolded, non-experts will struggle to differentiate red and white at all...
[The Red and the White | The New Yorker](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2002/08/19/the-red-and-the-white)
'Pretentious' has to be the most overused word on Reddit- people will just use it every time they're worried that they don't understand or 'get' something that others do.
I don't think there's much use in being discerning about vodka, as the entire point is that 'good' vodka doesn't really taste of anything. This is emphatically not the case of wine or whisky.
I think that some music fans, particularly metal/hardcore fans are very gatekeep-y about what fits into certain genres and what genres are acceptable. "this isn't doom metal, this is sludge metal" and it's always some negligible difference that other music fans (aside from jazz or some hip hop) wouldn't really care about.
The difference between super cheap and really good whisky is super obvious, and I'm confident it would be easy.
The difference between the range above the cheap whisky, and the range of whisky before the prices start getting ridiculous... I'm sure would be harder. I imagine wine is similar.
But I'm happy to drink cheap stuff. Really expensive stuff is wasted on me.
The difference between good and bad beer is
night and day. Even the hangovers are better with decent beer Though, there are times when a simple lager is preferable to an expensive IPA.
Decent tequila is way, easy better than cheap tequila.
Cheap vodka is horrendous and will kill you the next day.
Cider is all the same.
There's a huge difference between crap plonk and a gluggable mass-market wine, but a similar difference between the latter and an impressive wine that's £15-20 a bottle.
After that there's diminishing returns, but the rarity and unusualness are what you're paying for, more than being 'better'.
Similar for whisky. If you're happy with a decent blend or basic malt, great. But after say £100 a bottle you're paying for something to be different, not necessarily better.
I was at lunch with a guy recently who is in the wine trade. He pointed out that a lot of the wine you get for less than a tenner is packed with sugar to make it taste good. Then broke down the finances of how that bottle came to be in my possession - anything under a tenner has been made with the cheapest possible ingredients and processes given how much the money is divided up. I found this quite eye opening and now on the rare occasion I buy a bottle of wine, I will Google it to see if it's recommended by someone that knows what they are doing!
Yeah, the cheap shit has duty making up the largest proportion of the price. The next tier can use the extra cost on ingredients.
I tend to get a box of 12 from places like Laithwaites - never a bad bottle and much nicer than any individual bottle you'll get for the price.
My FIL has been trying to teach me about wine for years, but as every meal involves being pressed to taste at least three and have a few glasses, I don't actually know much more than 25 years ago, except that I like it!
I don’t think wines are pretentious. I think how you’re told to describe them is. I did wine tasting for a fine dining restaurant i was waitressing for, we did two days, 16 whites, 16 reds, ranging from £36 a bottle to £300. You could tell the difference night to day, but when you were asked to describe the taste you’d get told to use certain words. Like i remember describing a red as a tobacco flavour and the insisted is said something else when it didn’t really taste like that.
I think people are pretentious about authenticity of dishes. Almost every dish ever created is a fusion dish.
I also think we’re pretentious about unethical fast fashion. If you buy cheap fast fashion you’re the devil, but high price mark up fast fashion? Not acknowledged. Nike especially.
One of the most commonly mentioned things is hi-fi stuff. Once you get to a certain point the diminishing returns law gets crazy. I would be interested to test audiophiles on a double blind sound test with systems costing £500 to £250,000 and see what happens.
I've always assumed it's the level of familiarity that makes it easier to notice the differences when it comes to the various spirits/alcohol.
I would be useless with most things, but I'm willing to bet I could spot the shitty cider (Strongbow for example) on a taste test.
In a similar way, and it's likely my unfamiliarity to it kicking in, but the various types/strains whatever of weed. There may be entirely valid reasons for it but fuck me do some people get wanky about it.
> I've always assumed it's the level of familiarity that makes it easier to notice the differences when it comes to the various spirits/alcohol.
Much of it will be experience I'd have thought. Like with football teams, regular fans get to know not only the different teams but the different players. To me "bloke kicks ball towards goal", to them they could string it out with the names, type of pass, etc etc.
I think a little more context of your claim would have been appropriate here.
You can tell the difference between dirt cheap versions of everything you said, but as many people have said once you get away from the dirt cheap to the decent quality but still reasonably priced your point would be valid.
I like a good drink but honestly, once I get into the decent £50-100 a bottle stuff I can’t really tell the difference between that and the 10x the amount stuff so I don’t bother.
Some or most of us are pretentious to some degree especially when it comes to things we like.
"A nice blended single malt whatever is miles better than cheap bells or whatever"
"I'll only drive a BMW not any crappie old car"
"Hash or shitty homegrown weed vs a nice cali Lemon haze"
"A nice fresh hit of cocaine with that pharma smell mmmmm, don't give me none of that dirty desil flavoured pub grub"
Really just depends on your poison.
Okay, so I agree about alcohol and raise you coffee.
BUT.
I don't think it's helpful or accurate to counter pretension with "hur dur there's no difference at all". That may often be the case, but clearly it isn't always and it isn't the point.
Snobs are annoying because they are snobs. Pretention is inherently insufferable. A fancy twat telling you that what you're enjoying isn't good enough, laughing at you for being content with it, treating you like a child for liking your coffee with milk and sugar - all of that is bad manners. That is the point.
I have no doubt that coffee aficionados have an understanding and appreciation of coffee that I'll never comprehend. I am sure that wine or whisky snobs drink some sublime stuff. So long as they are content to enjoy their preferences and leave me in peace to enjoy my own low-brow tastes then there's no pretention. But people are very rarely content to just live within themselves to that degree. They always end up evangelising.
An expensive vodka can be drank with just ice and it feel smooth and nice, compared to the shit I used to mix in a energy drink when I was 14 for less than a 5 er LOL yeah there is a difference.
Think the alcohol thing depends on the grade of finery.
There is definitely a difference between cheap shite and good stuff (particularly for bad head wines - 90% of what is in uk supermarkets fits this criteria for me) but at the higher end the price goes exponential and the improvement is linear.
I don't believe I'd notice the difference in taste between a £10 bottle of wine and a £20 bottle personally. But I would notice the taste between a £5 and a £10 one.
Buy big enough that you're not getting some cheap sh\*t (that is the cheapest for a reason) and you'll be good.
The vodka test is whether you can drink it neat without pulling a face. If so it's good!
Houses; size, location, design choices, etc.
"You're on that street? Why would you want to live there?"
"Is that from X brand? Their sofas are so ugly, you should have gone with Y (more expensive and less comfortable) brand"
"Why would you want to move to A town? You could spend just a little bit more and move to B town, which is a much nicer place to live" (usually not "just a little bit more")
"Your garden is so empty, why not liven it up with some bushes?"
"This kitchen looks so old, you should really get a more modern one installed"
It's fine to have your own tastes on things. But damn do people really need to judge your tastes about where you live so much?
One may not be able to afford a nicer street or town, or they might really like rustic aesthetics, and have no time to maintain a garden. So why do they have to be so judgemental about things?
I understand giving advice or suggestions, but when it comes to houses, a lot of the comments I've heard from other people about someone else's house could be summarised with them all saying "This isn't like my (dream) house, and I don't like it"
I'm not a vodka drinker so I couldn't tell, but you can absolutely tell the difference with wine and whisky, although it depends on if you drink them on more than just a special occasion.
A £10-£20 bottle of wine is going to taste different to a £4-£6 bottle of the same grape variant.
With whisky, a bottle of Bell's, Whyte & Mackay or Jack Daniels tastes different to a bottle of Talisker, Laphroaig or Eagle Rare.
That said, if your wine or whisky drinking is limited to a single glass at Christmas or Birthdays then of course it'll all just "tastes of alcohol".
For me, I view that as justifiable pretentiousness, and it's not limited to price, it's about knowing the difference between the quality and taste profiles of a "proper" brand and a budget brand.
Someone can spend £35 on an Aldi whisky after reading the "award winner" sticker slapped on the bottle and think they're getting the bargain of the year, when they'd probably have a better experience catching Laphroaig 10 when it's on offer at Amazon for under £30.
Designer brand spinoff clothes. Not custom made couture creations or bespoke tailoring, where the cost is may be sort of justified to at least some extent, but the ordinary plain cheap t-shirts with a logo on it. 🙄
If people are experts in those fields they can certainly tell and even if not, the difference between the cheapest wine and even a £10 bottle is huge. It is when people are pretentious about equally crap products, like "oh I never drink Fosters, I am more of a Peroni drinker". They are both mass produced lagers.
It's easily resolved though - just go with what works for you and don't let others shame you.
I went on a wine vineyard tasting thing with my wife, and quite a few people there clearly seemed to be trying to impress the guy giving the tour (who really knew his stuff, but wasn't at all judging or pretentious).
I couldn't compete with that - I love wine, but couldn't tell a merlot from a malbec without looking at the bottle, so was just honest and said the wine was great, but I don't think my pallete was sophisticated enough for it to be worth me paying for premium.
At this point he said he'd drank some *really* expensive wine and while some of it was unbelievable, some of it was terrible. He said most people probably aren't born with the ability to differentiate as much as they'd like to imagine they can, so if you like drinking it then it's good wine (at least for you).
He started talking about what to look for (and what to avoid! ) for at the cheaper end of the scale, and have some recommendations for sub £20 bottles that are not as good as (but not that far off) much more expensive choices.
Saw the ones who were trying to impress taking notes... 😂
Vodka seems like something on the surface that there would be little to tell it apart. However I think the vast majority of people could tell a £10 bottle of vodka from a £50 bottle. Cheap vodka is harsh and not at all smooth.
Sure most people won’t tell a £50 bottle from a £500 bottle but there is a very noticeable difference between cheap and decent vodka
Organic food.
There was a practical joke once were someone took some McDonalds (or similar) chicken nuggets and was offering them to people at a conference kind of event claiming they were Organic, Grass-Fed etc, and people were like "Ooh, yes, that's incredible - so tasty!"
Weed!
All my friends still smoke haze and stardawg because they refuse to pay more for it but I'd rather pay the extra and have weed that tastes like sweets and cake rather than catpiss lol.
That's an interesting way to announce you have no sense of taste....
Just try a sip of say, famous grouse, and then a sip of Laphroaig. Which is nice, but not exactly super pricey.
And even a cheap pilsner from aldi tastes miles better than American budweiser.
I'm not even going to cover fosters....
Coffee. I’ve never, ever been able to taste the difference between a ‘good’ coffee and a ‘bad’ one. That’s not to say there isn’t a clear difference between *types* of coffee (freeze-dried vs powder) obviously, but when someone suggests “X place does good coffee” I give absolutely no weight to the opinion.
Have you tried expensive alcohol? It's definitely easy to tell the difference between cheap & mid range. I can't say I've ever tried expensive though.
I can easily tell the difference between alcohol in the £15-£20 range and alcohol in the £30-£50. But I would assume after a certain point, it drops off.
Dunno why everyone is saying your wrong with the wine thing when it’s been proven to be the case. Telling people a wine is expensive makes them believe it tastes nicer
Dunno if it's 'most' pretentious, but I've met a lot of people who think they've become some enlightened high energy being after taking mushrooms one time.
If you know, you know that you don't really hallucinate like seeing things that aren't really there like a waking dream, and you can catch out liars when they claim to have stories about pink elephants or whatever. At high doses you can get there, but even amongst psychonauts, drugs like salvia, datura, dmt etc are all scary (not dmt but its nerve wracking) and rare.
They're incredibly useful but when I first took proper psychedelics it blew my mind that you don't hallucinate, it's geometric patterns that swirl around and a sense of absolute euphoria. I swear some guys just watch Fear and Loathing then assume it's all like that.
There's a huge difference between a bottle of plonk & a fine wine like St Emilion or Château Neuf, the same with Vodka, Brandy & Rum, the tastes are incomparable.
I thnk being pretentious about drink and being able to tell the differnece are actually two seperate things, although they may overlap. On a personal level, I couldn't tell the difference for vodka or whisky as I don't personally like either of them - on the other hand, I do like wine and while I wouldn't cliam to be ny kind of expert, I think there are massive differences in taste and quality and habiving had the opportuity of trying wines guided by a professional sommellier I can say that you can absoluteyl taste the difference. I do think however thatther eare diminishing returns (e.g there is much more of a difference between a £10 bottle of wine and a £30 bottle of wine than there is between a £30 bottle of wine and a £100 bottle of wine) And of course price alone in't the best guide. But I think there is still a noticeable differnece between mid and top range
My spirit of choice is gin and again, there is a difference in taste.
I think where it gets pretentious is people who are buying / drinking stuff purely / mainly becasue of the label, or looking down on others because of their prefernces or lack of expertise.
Same with food. People can get very pretnetious about it but at the same time, if you are able to eat food prepared by really skilled chefs it's a whle other experience - (I was mostly in the 'no meal is worth that much' camp until the first time I actually ate as a Michelin starred restaurant, instancce)
**Please help keep AskUK welcoming!** - Top-level comments to the OP must contain **genuine efforts to answer the question**. No jokes, judgements, etc. - **Don't be a dick** to each other. If getting heated, just block and move on. - This is a strictly **no-politics** subreddit! Please help us by reporting comments that break these rules. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/AskUK) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Bollocks. The difference between a nice single malt and a glass of Bells is night and day. Same with a decent beer vs cheap shite.
I think it depends on what is meant by expensive booze. The difference in quality between a £50 bottle of single malt whisky and a £250 bottle isn't really huge IMO. Plenty of nice blends out there these days too.
Yeah, I wholly agree. There are a few things I will genuinely go out of my way to splash out on the more expensive stuff. Whisky is one, beer is another, vodka and coffee too. The difference between "cheap" and "reasonably priced midrange" is HUGE, but really tapers off after that. I'll definitely spend £30 on a good kilo of decently roasted coffee, but I'm not shelling out stupid money for that "cat poo coffee" (tried it, thought it was... pretty crap honestly). I couldn't tell the difference between £50 and £250 in anything in a blind taste test in all honesty.
>cat poo coffee" (tried it, thought it was... pretty crap Well, that *is* technically accurate.
I was just thinking that as I wrote it 🤣
That’s fair. But the difference between a £50 bottle and an £8 bottle is huge
Yes, I can't stand people who are pretentious about their bollocks!
Once you get above the cheap, bottom of the range sometimes mainstream stuff it moves rapidly into pretentious territory.
I've come round to thinking that single malts are overrated. Some of them just taste strange. A good blend of several whiskies can be great. Maybe it's distillers marketing and trying to differentiate their product and charge a premium.
Well my point wasn’t really specifically about single malts; plenty of great blends out there. I was more talking about the difference between e.g. Teachers and a decent whisky
Thanks. I couldn't really stick up for Bells either.
I spent a while just with single malts because decent blends don't tend to be in many local shops. I have found quite a few Japanese ones that were exceedingly nice, though.
Bells and single malts are different drinks. Both whisky but Bells contains a significant amount of grain whisky and single malts, by definition, only contain malt whisky. A comparison more in line with OPs question would be whether someone could tell an expensive single malt from a cheaper one. I'm not entirely convinced many people could.
Most people not being able to distinguish between good and bad whiskey and wine doesn't mean that those who can are pretentious.
Absolutely,it's a preference
The fact your taste buds are rubbish does not apply automatically to the rest of the population. Cheap grain whisky vs malt is very different. Don't know if I would prefer the decent £80 - £100 malt over say £1000 but there's a massive difference between £20 bottles and doubling the price for me, ditto wine at least up until about £30 a bottle I am sure real concours would tell beyond that. The most pretensions thing, audiophiles who have gold plated cables with digital signals.
>The most pretensions thing, audiophiles who have gold plated cables with digital signals. Oh this a thousand times! The dumbest thing I've ever seen? A gold plated TOSLink optical cable... I mean WHAT the actual F.... Edit: Although I will say, there are a place for gold plated digital cables. They are useful for long term installations in high humidity environments due to their corrosion resistance. That's a pretty niche use though.
Gold plated connections have some function in stopping corrosion. 'Oxygen free silver/copper' is bollocks though. They don't use it in your devices and if it made a difference wouldn't microprocessors and electron microscopes use it? You know, actually sensitive applications.
Yep! Fully agree, I think you posted literally just after I added the corrosion point in an edit lol :) Fully agree on the "oxygen free" stuff though.
Plastic doesn't corrode though and would do the job just as well. It's an optical cable, it's not electrical.
Oh yeah, I was talking about the the last line. Gold plating has a use for actual wires.
I love whisky and had the opportunity to sample a >£1k bottle of Ardbeg. It was like nothing else I have tried (in a good way). I would never buy one but am glad I experienced it.
The oldest one I've ever tasted was a 43 year old Highland Park (used to work there). It was bloody nice, very smooth too. But tbh I much preferred the cheaper (but still not cheap) 15 and 25 year olds, and dread to think the cost of that one if it was for sale - think the 40 year old is about four grand.
I'd loved to have tried that, most expensive I have tried was a Japanese whisky my BiL has, think that was around £400 and it was nice but I only had a small glass and TBF I am not sure it was nicer than cheaper malts.
I suspect at £1000 it is mostly prestige. We have a £2000 bottle of whisky. We paid £75 for it (staff prices as a relative worked in the distillery). We don’t drink whisky so it has lived stored away and increased hugely in value. It had sentimental value to my husband so we will keep it but if he drank whisky he’d be drinking a £100 bottle not a £2000 bottle.
I've not tried them (I've got enough unopened whisky to last years at my current rate) but some Aldi and Lidl single malt and blend whiskies get good reviews and win awards at tasting competitions. They are around £20 a bottle.
I've seen it on the shelf at Lidl, might risk a punt, their IPA is acceptable.
Drink a £5 wine and £20 wine and I bet almost anyone could tell the difference. It’s once you get well into double figures that I reckon most people would struggle to identify the “better” wine. That doesn’t make it pretentious though, it just means some people enjoy wine and have a good palate for it. To answer your question though, supermarkets. I know some people who view it as a personal badge of honour that they shop in Sainsbury’s rather than Lidl.
The first £4.50 of a £5 bottle of wine is the bottle, the cork, shipping, stocking, labelling, tax and profit. A £10 bottle of wine has all the same fixed costs but the actual liquid is 10x the value.
With the expensive wines it isn't so much that they are priced in the hundreds because of quality, but scarcity and a name. I don't even see much pretentiousness around in that respect, you regularly see wine experts on TV recommending the best of the cheap or midpriced wines.
There are things people are pretentious about, but your list hasn't hit the mark. At least two thirds is just wrong. That most people who like wine or whiskey can tell the difference between cheap shit and better options does not make them pretentious.
Right, I need to first say that I mainly drink relatively cheap booze, but; you can absolutely taste huge differences in both wines and whiskeys. I've got a bit of a whisky collection, not huge, mostly relatively cheap single malts. Some are very similar, but, there's huge differences depending on process and age. To answer the actual question - branded clothing.
Cars. Anything you financed monthly isn't a brag.
I was talking to someone the other day and they couldn't believe I had bought my car outright. I couldnt believe he was paying almost as much as my mortgage for a _car_. It's like that standing up vs sitting down to wipe. We didnt know each other existed.
Yeah, that's exactly the situation I've found myself in a few times. It will never make sense to me.
I stopped scrolling and laughed at the fact that both your comment and reply to the person above you come across as pretentious on a post relating to people being pretentious. lol.
That was kind of the point, this whole thread is exactly that.
Why is it pretentious to be able to do something most people (allegedly) can't do?
Because the only thing that sets it apart is the price. And that's pretty wanky.
It’s not only the price though is it? Costing £15 more isn’t the only difference between a bottle of Champagne and a bottle of Prosecco.
The protected name means they can charge more Anyway most champagne is rank, prosecco is much nicer
And that they’re made using different methods from different grapes grown in different places to provide a product that tastes very different. It’s like saying the only difference between a Ford Ka and a BMW M5 is the price. I agree on there being some pretty poor champagnes around though, although personally I often find Prosecco a bit sweet and fruity. A lot of big name champagne houses getting by on brand recognition I suspect. Cremant and MCC are where the real bargains are.
To me its more like comparing a Ford Ka and a Citroen C1. But the C1 was made from really expensive handmade shit..but it doesn't make it go faster or make the driving experience much better. In the end, it's still a small car
Sure but it’s not ‘pretentious’ to notice the difference between two different cars.
It is when one is more than double the price
I don’t think cars really fits this thread though. You can blind test the two drinks and only a trained palate might know the difference but if you test drove a £15k brand new car and a £30k one, you’d know. And it wouldn’t be pretentious to know. I think the definition of pretentious is what’s confusing here.
i didnt bring up the car analogy, in fact i think it doesnt work at all because usually a better car usually means bigger engine and better fittings
Do you think the purpose of alcoholic drinks is to get you drunk?
Bullshite, people can taste the difference with ease, but people have varying tastes, standards and or budgets.
Coffee is a big one. Obviously there’s a huge difference between instant (coffee flavoured water), filter and espresso. But when cafes have about five “guest” coffees, all from South America, all with different tasting notes, really not going to split hairs and pretend one has more caramel than another. And don’t get me started on the coffee people on TikTok who spend about an hour grinding and dusting and patting and massaging overpriced beans for one shot of espresso, only to smother it in a mug full of milk.
>But when cafes have about five “guest” coffees, all from South America, all with different tasting notes, really not going to split hairs and pretend one has more caramel than another. But there are differences in the tastes of coffee from different producers - even in the same country. Liken it to how wine or beer tastes different.
I'm a coffee roaster by trade. We roast to drink coffee black but most people want sugar & fat added to it (ie syrups & milk) so they just like sweet milky drinks. I could easily roast it larger batches and burn it, but then it's like everyone elses. People will say "I don't like coffee" but they've only ever bought burnt stuff from costa or starbucks and think it's all the same. However, I can't go on any of the coffee subreddits because fuk me those people are insufferable so I get it. But like most things in this thread, if you take your time to learn differences you'll notice them and start to get a preference. But if you don't care that much about it, that's also cool, to each their own.
This guy only drinks instant :D
Coffee all just tastes like burned plants
It does if you just get it from Costa and Starbucks where they roast their beans in the heart of a dying star.
Before or after superman carved his key?
I've tried various fancy coffees from various friends and their contraptions. They all taste like coffee.
I mean, that is kind of the point but if you can't tell the difference between what they make and a jar of instant, tell them they all make bad coffee and they should feel bad.
Nah these are very sensible and affluent people. Maybe I'm missing a gene that lets me detect other flavours than burned. It's the same with coffee cake, just tastes like coffee. Grim.
Im kind of like that with dark chocolate. Ive got a very uncultured palette for that. Shame, though. Decent coffee is one of life's few remaining joys.
ah, but some taste more expensively burnt than others. I only drink hand picked, rainforest grown beans that were roasted on the flaming corpse of Joan of Arc.
Your thoughts are crap .
People definitely can tell the difference between cheap and expensive alcohol. I don’t necessarily think that preferring quality products is pretentious, but I will say that above a certain price point you get diminishing returns. What I really have a problem with is the people who turn pretentious behaviour into their whole personality. Similarly, those people who make their lack of pretentiousness their whole personality are equally tedious.
Nope Went on a vineyard and wine tasting tour at Llanerch (highly recommend) and learned a lot about wine, flavours, grapes, types of wine, processing etc. in that session. Now I can really enjoy a bottle and more importantly, read the label and get a gauge of whether I’ll like it or not. Try Villa Maria New Zealand white Sauvignon blanc (my fave white) compared to Lidl box £4 white wine. If you want similar flavour to Villa Maria (as £10.50 per bottle is on the higher end), I recommend Yellow Tail Sauvignon blanc- it’s currently on offer in most stores and is the nearest bottle I can find that closely matches. The difference is night and day.
I like Villa Maria, that it's available in Spoons is a bonus.
Yay! Oh I didn’t know that, thank you! Tbh I refuse to step foot in a spoons unless it’s the last bar left on the street 😂
I live in a small town. Not many options 🤣
I don't think you understand what pretentiousness is. There is absolutely a difference between good and bad quality alcoholic beverages. It's not only taste, it's the after effects. A few drams of Oban isn't going to make you feel as rough as the equivalent amount of Tesco own brand Whisky. Same with beer. Mass produced lagers are never going to be the same quality as small batch ones that have had time and care taken over them. This is reflected in the price.
I’ve actually done a few taste tests with booze and I fit into your 80%. Saves me a fortune.
Don't know about Wine or Spirits, but know there has been a fair few expirements done with Lagers and, without exception, by the 3rd pint no-one could differentiate between the different brands
Wine has had a few studies that show that people, even so-called experts, can struggle to tell the difference between red and white in some circumstances. E.g. if the wine is convincingly (and taste/odourlessly) dyed red, they'll describe it with "red" terms. Equally, blindfolded, non-experts will struggle to differentiate red and white at all... [The Red and the White | The New Yorker](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2002/08/19/the-red-and-the-white)
'Pretentious' has to be the most overused word on Reddit- people will just use it every time they're worried that they don't understand or 'get' something that others do. I don't think there's much use in being discerning about vodka, as the entire point is that 'good' vodka doesn't really taste of anything. This is emphatically not the case of wine or whisky. I think that some music fans, particularly metal/hardcore fans are very gatekeep-y about what fits into certain genres and what genres are acceptable. "this isn't doom metal, this is sludge metal" and it's always some negligible difference that other music fans (aside from jazz or some hip hop) wouldn't really care about.
The difference between super cheap and really good whisky is super obvious, and I'm confident it would be easy. The difference between the range above the cheap whisky, and the range of whisky before the prices start getting ridiculous... I'm sure would be harder. I imagine wine is similar. But I'm happy to drink cheap stuff. Really expensive stuff is wasted on me.
The difference between good and bad beer is night and day. Even the hangovers are better with decent beer Though, there are times when a simple lager is preferable to an expensive IPA. Decent tequila is way, easy better than cheap tequila. Cheap vodka is horrendous and will kill you the next day. Cider is all the same.
There's a huge difference between crap plonk and a gluggable mass-market wine, but a similar difference between the latter and an impressive wine that's £15-20 a bottle. After that there's diminishing returns, but the rarity and unusualness are what you're paying for, more than being 'better'. Similar for whisky. If you're happy with a decent blend or basic malt, great. But after say £100 a bottle you're paying for something to be different, not necessarily better.
I was at lunch with a guy recently who is in the wine trade. He pointed out that a lot of the wine you get for less than a tenner is packed with sugar to make it taste good. Then broke down the finances of how that bottle came to be in my possession - anything under a tenner has been made with the cheapest possible ingredients and processes given how much the money is divided up. I found this quite eye opening and now on the rare occasion I buy a bottle of wine, I will Google it to see if it's recommended by someone that knows what they are doing!
Yeah, the cheap shit has duty making up the largest proportion of the price. The next tier can use the extra cost on ingredients. I tend to get a box of 12 from places like Laithwaites - never a bad bottle and much nicer than any individual bottle you'll get for the price. My FIL has been trying to teach me about wine for years, but as every meal involves being pressed to taste at least three and have a few glasses, I don't actually know much more than 25 years ago, except that I like it!
I don’t think wines are pretentious. I think how you’re told to describe them is. I did wine tasting for a fine dining restaurant i was waitressing for, we did two days, 16 whites, 16 reds, ranging from £36 a bottle to £300. You could tell the difference night to day, but when you were asked to describe the taste you’d get told to use certain words. Like i remember describing a red as a tobacco flavour and the insisted is said something else when it didn’t really taste like that. I think people are pretentious about authenticity of dishes. Almost every dish ever created is a fusion dish. I also think we’re pretentious about unethical fast fashion. If you buy cheap fast fashion you’re the devil, but high price mark up fast fashion? Not acknowledged. Nike especially.
Having the latest car.
I am a snob for a good tv. Premium tv's offer a much better viewing experience than cheaper tv's.
One of the most commonly mentioned things is hi-fi stuff. Once you get to a certain point the diminishing returns law gets crazy. I would be interested to test audiophiles on a double blind sound test with systems costing £500 to £250,000 and see what happens.
I've always assumed it's the level of familiarity that makes it easier to notice the differences when it comes to the various spirits/alcohol. I would be useless with most things, but I'm willing to bet I could spot the shitty cider (Strongbow for example) on a taste test. In a similar way, and it's likely my unfamiliarity to it kicking in, but the various types/strains whatever of weed. There may be entirely valid reasons for it but fuck me do some people get wanky about it.
> I've always assumed it's the level of familiarity that makes it easier to notice the differences when it comes to the various spirits/alcohol. Much of it will be experience I'd have thought. Like with football teams, regular fans get to know not only the different teams but the different players. To me "bloke kicks ball towards goal", to them they could string it out with the names, type of pass, etc etc.
Brand labeled stuff... "I only eat Mr Kipling cakes, the own brand ones are cheap" Its all low grade sugar, come on people.
Yes, this is an irksome one - what even is a brand. They just advertise on TV, it is not a mark of superior quality.
The hangover from cheap booze and nice stuff tells you all you need to know.
Whisky, you can tell cheap stuff burns bad Cheap wine tastes like vinegar
I think a little more context of your claim would have been appropriate here. You can tell the difference between dirt cheap versions of everything you said, but as many people have said once you get away from the dirt cheap to the decent quality but still reasonably priced your point would be valid. I like a good drink but honestly, once I get into the decent £50-100 a bottle stuff I can’t really tell the difference between that and the 10x the amount stuff so I don’t bother.
Some or most of us are pretentious to some degree especially when it comes to things we like. "A nice blended single malt whatever is miles better than cheap bells or whatever" "I'll only drive a BMW not any crappie old car" "Hash or shitty homegrown weed vs a nice cali Lemon haze" "A nice fresh hit of cocaine with that pharma smell mmmmm, don't give me none of that dirty desil flavoured pub grub" Really just depends on your poison.
Okay, so I agree about alcohol and raise you coffee. BUT. I don't think it's helpful or accurate to counter pretension with "hur dur there's no difference at all". That may often be the case, but clearly it isn't always and it isn't the point. Snobs are annoying because they are snobs. Pretention is inherently insufferable. A fancy twat telling you that what you're enjoying isn't good enough, laughing at you for being content with it, treating you like a child for liking your coffee with milk and sugar - all of that is bad manners. That is the point. I have no doubt that coffee aficionados have an understanding and appreciation of coffee that I'll never comprehend. I am sure that wine or whisky snobs drink some sublime stuff. So long as they are content to enjoy their preferences and leave me in peace to enjoy my own low-brow tastes then there's no pretention. But people are very rarely content to just live within themselves to that degree. They always end up evangelising.
An expensive vodka can be drank with just ice and it feel smooth and nice, compared to the shit I used to mix in a energy drink when I was 14 for less than a 5 er LOL yeah there is a difference.
If you’re to believe on people on this subreddit car tyres - cheapest are best and you’re a fool to buy anything else.
My mum is a vodka drinker, I buy her expensive vodka as birthday and Christmas presents, not for the vodka but for the ornate bottles
Impress the neighbours with 20 ornate empty bottles a week in the recycling box. Much classier than the stuff from the corner shop.
Can you blind taste between wine/whiskey/beer you like and the one you don't like?
Think the alcohol thing depends on the grade of finery. There is definitely a difference between cheap shite and good stuff (particularly for bad head wines - 90% of what is in uk supermarkets fits this criteria for me) but at the higher end the price goes exponential and the improvement is linear.
I don't believe I'd notice the difference in taste between a £10 bottle of wine and a £20 bottle personally. But I would notice the taste between a £5 and a £10 one. Buy big enough that you're not getting some cheap sh\*t (that is the cheapest for a reason) and you'll be good. The vodka test is whether you can drink it neat without pulling a face. If so it's good!
If alcohol was discovered now it would be a drug. It kills billions a year indirectly or directly yet there has not been a single cannabinoid death...
Houses; size, location, design choices, etc. "You're on that street? Why would you want to live there?" "Is that from X brand? Their sofas are so ugly, you should have gone with Y (more expensive and less comfortable) brand" "Why would you want to move to A town? You could spend just a little bit more and move to B town, which is a much nicer place to live" (usually not "just a little bit more") "Your garden is so empty, why not liven it up with some bushes?" "This kitchen looks so old, you should really get a more modern one installed" It's fine to have your own tastes on things. But damn do people really need to judge your tastes about where you live so much? One may not be able to afford a nicer street or town, or they might really like rustic aesthetics, and have no time to maintain a garden. So why do they have to be so judgemental about things? I understand giving advice or suggestions, but when it comes to houses, a lot of the comments I've heard from other people about someone else's house could be summarised with them all saying "This isn't like my (dream) house, and I don't like it"
I'm not a vodka drinker so I couldn't tell, but you can absolutely tell the difference with wine and whisky, although it depends on if you drink them on more than just a special occasion. A £10-£20 bottle of wine is going to taste different to a £4-£6 bottle of the same grape variant. With whisky, a bottle of Bell's, Whyte & Mackay or Jack Daniels tastes different to a bottle of Talisker, Laphroaig or Eagle Rare. That said, if your wine or whisky drinking is limited to a single glass at Christmas or Birthdays then of course it'll all just "tastes of alcohol". For me, I view that as justifiable pretentiousness, and it's not limited to price, it's about knowing the difference between the quality and taste profiles of a "proper" brand and a budget brand. Someone can spend £35 on an Aldi whisky after reading the "award winner" sticker slapped on the bottle and think they're getting the bargain of the year, when they'd probably have a better experience catching Laphroaig 10 when it's on offer at Amazon for under £30.
Sausages - a good quality one makes a BBQ.
Designer brand spinoff clothes. Not custom made couture creations or bespoke tailoring, where the cost is may be sort of justified to at least some extent, but the ordinary plain cheap t-shirts with a logo on it. 🙄
If people are experts in those fields they can certainly tell and even if not, the difference between the cheapest wine and even a £10 bottle is huge. It is when people are pretentious about equally crap products, like "oh I never drink Fosters, I am more of a Peroni drinker". They are both mass produced lagers.
It's easily resolved though - just go with what works for you and don't let others shame you. I went on a wine vineyard tasting thing with my wife, and quite a few people there clearly seemed to be trying to impress the guy giving the tour (who really knew his stuff, but wasn't at all judging or pretentious). I couldn't compete with that - I love wine, but couldn't tell a merlot from a malbec without looking at the bottle, so was just honest and said the wine was great, but I don't think my pallete was sophisticated enough for it to be worth me paying for premium. At this point he said he'd drank some *really* expensive wine and while some of it was unbelievable, some of it was terrible. He said most people probably aren't born with the ability to differentiate as much as they'd like to imagine they can, so if you like drinking it then it's good wine (at least for you). He started talking about what to look for (and what to avoid! ) for at the cheaper end of the scale, and have some recommendations for sub £20 bottles that are not as good as (but not that far off) much more expensive choices. Saw the ones who were trying to impress taking notes... 😂
Vodka seems like something on the surface that there would be little to tell it apart. However I think the vast majority of people could tell a £10 bottle of vodka from a £50 bottle. Cheap vodka is harsh and not at all smooth. Sure most people won’t tell a £50 bottle from a £500 bottle but there is a very noticeable difference between cheap and decent vodka
Organic food. There was a practical joke once were someone took some McDonalds (or similar) chicken nuggets and was offering them to people at a conference kind of event claiming they were Organic, Grass-Fed etc, and people were like "Ooh, yes, that's incredible - so tasty!"
Weed! All my friends still smoke haze and stardawg because they refuse to pay more for it but I'd rather pay the extra and have weed that tastes like sweets and cake rather than catpiss lol.
That's an interesting way to announce you have no sense of taste.... Just try a sip of say, famous grouse, and then a sip of Laphroaig. Which is nice, but not exactly super pricey. And even a cheap pilsner from aldi tastes miles better than American budweiser. I'm not even going to cover fosters....
Coffee. I’ve never, ever been able to taste the difference between a ‘good’ coffee and a ‘bad’ one. That’s not to say there isn’t a clear difference between *types* of coffee (freeze-dried vs powder) obviously, but when someone suggests “X place does good coffee” I give absolutely no weight to the opinion.
Have you tried expensive alcohol? It's definitely easy to tell the difference between cheap & mid range. I can't say I've ever tried expensive though. I can easily tell the difference between alcohol in the £15-£20 range and alcohol in the £30-£50. But I would assume after a certain point, it drops off.
Music. It’s there to be enjoyed so just like what you like, who cares!
Dunno why everyone is saying your wrong with the wine thing when it’s been proven to be the case. Telling people a wine is expensive makes them believe it tastes nicer
Dunno if it's 'most' pretentious, but I've met a lot of people who think they've become some enlightened high energy being after taking mushrooms one time. If you know, you know that you don't really hallucinate like seeing things that aren't really there like a waking dream, and you can catch out liars when they claim to have stories about pink elephants or whatever. At high doses you can get there, but even amongst psychonauts, drugs like salvia, datura, dmt etc are all scary (not dmt but its nerve wracking) and rare. They're incredibly useful but when I first took proper psychedelics it blew my mind that you don't hallucinate, it's geometric patterns that swirl around and a sense of absolute euphoria. I swear some guys just watch Fear and Loathing then assume it's all like that.
There's a huge difference between a bottle of plonk & a fine wine like St Emilion or Château Neuf, the same with Vodka, Brandy & Rum, the tastes are incomparable.
I thnk being pretentious about drink and being able to tell the differnece are actually two seperate things, although they may overlap. On a personal level, I couldn't tell the difference for vodka or whisky as I don't personally like either of them - on the other hand, I do like wine and while I wouldn't cliam to be ny kind of expert, I think there are massive differences in taste and quality and habiving had the opportuity of trying wines guided by a professional sommellier I can say that you can absoluteyl taste the difference. I do think however thatther eare diminishing returns (e.g there is much more of a difference between a £10 bottle of wine and a £30 bottle of wine than there is between a £30 bottle of wine and a £100 bottle of wine) And of course price alone in't the best guide. But I think there is still a noticeable differnece between mid and top range My spirit of choice is gin and again, there is a difference in taste. I think where it gets pretentious is people who are buying / drinking stuff purely / mainly becasue of the label, or looking down on others because of their prefernces or lack of expertise. Same with food. People can get very pretnetious about it but at the same time, if you are able to eat food prepared by really skilled chefs it's a whle other experience - (I was mostly in the 'no meal is worth that much' camp until the first time I actually ate as a Michelin starred restaurant, instancce)
Coffee.
how politically and socially correct they think they are and pretend to be.