61% of people who talk a lot about Wine are ******

According to an article in Slate: "A new way of measuring pretentiousness":

I said, “You mean that 61 percent of people who talk a lot about wine are —” 

“Correct,” he said, before I could finish ..

Here's a summary: 

When I entered the nearly empty bar near Grand Central, I was unsurprised — and, I’ll admit, rather pleased—to see, sitting on the stool he’d occupied when I was in the bar some months before, the mature gentleman who had told me that the economic crisis was inevitable once smart people started taking jobs on Wall Street.

“Our guys would have never invented credit default swaps,” he’d explained. “They couldn’t have done the math.”

I settled myself a few stools away, but I did nod; in return, he lifted his martini in my direction as a sort of understated toast. 

No sooner had I ordered a drink than we had occasion to exchange glances that communicated dismay: Three men who were sitting at the other end of the room had begun discussing wine in voices that seemed intended to enlighten oenophiles who were strolling past 

The man at the end of the bar nodded in their direction and said, “Among people who think of themselves as wine connoisseurs there’s a 61 percent ACI.”

I was puzzled. “What’s an ACI?” I asked.

He lowered his voice a bit, as if he was about to use somewhat offensive language and wanted to make certain no women (he would have said “ladies”) were in ear-shot. “Asshole Correlation Index,” he said.

I said, “You mean that 61 percent of people who talk a lot about wine are—”

“Correct,” he said, before I could finish.

“That’s not even particularly high, as these things go. That means that nearly 40 percent of people who think of themselves as wine connoisseurs are people who have learned a lot about wine for one legitimate reason or another and are not pretentious about it. Those guys over there are in the other 61 percent, I’d wager. When they get through analyzing a few pinot noirs that they wouldn’t actually be able to tell apart, they’ll probably turn to cigars or single malt scotch.

People who spend a lot of time discussing both cigars and single malt scotch, by the way, have a 78 percent ACI. That’s high—much higher than connoisseurs of either one singly. If you add wine to those two, it’s off the charts.”

“But aren’t you stereotyping people?” I asked.

“Only a certain percentage of them,” he said. “For instance, what do you think when you see a guy who’s wearing a blazer over a sport shirt, and the shirt is unbuttoned nearly to the navel? What’s your first reaction?”

“Creep,” I said.

“Not me,” he said. “I think 93 percent ACI. Admittedly, that’s high.

It’s one of the highest ACI’s on record. It’s 25 points higher than the ACI for males who wear designer jeans and 12 points higher than males who wore Nehru jackets or bell-bottom pants in the ’70s.

So you might say that the ACI is a device that allows some people to be a bit more tolerant than some other people—no offense.

That sounded disturbingly logical. Also, I happen to have in my safety-deposit box a list of people I know who wore Nehru jackets in the ’70s. 

Full Article

Of course this is all tongue in cheek but it is indeed strange that people do not pontificate about food as much as they do about wine. 


Yet people are more than happy to buy a £3.33 wine (after removing tax that is about £0.02) but would not shirk from paying £1 or over for a lettuce.


See my earlier articles: 


"Can a Wine be Excellent to One but Horrible to Another?"


3 bottles for £10 wine is just 2p per bottle for the wine

More on Nehru jackets on this blog soon.

Back to an interesting comment: 

“Our guys would have never invented credit default swaps,” he’d explained. “They couldn’t have done the math.”

That would have been in the days of institutional insider trading and tips passed around at The Club.


As it happens I am preparing a training programme in Kuala Lumpur on Asset and Liability Management. I will start the seminar with this line to warm things up. See my Finance blog. There is some overlap as you will see.
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Warren EDWARDES


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