Why Do Embassies Buy Wines Costing Between ¥100,000 and ¥199,999 a Bottle?—The Waste of Taxpayers’ Money and Questions About an NHK Anchor Who Condones It
October 6, 2010
NHK News is now showing how embassies buy expensive wines in large quantities and throw them away…
It also reveals that those who are yokels in spirit, beholden to someone else, do not possess even a sense of discernment when it comes to wine…
Surely this is not something to be done with taxpayers’ money…
Yet the anchor, who is presumably highly paid himself, made such blithe remarks as, “It’s diplomacy, after all…it loosens tongues, so I think that’s fine in its own way.”
Whether in Europe or the United States, there are countless reasonably priced, delicious wines available locally…
Besides, with wine, storage conditions are everything…
Anyone who thinks that an expensive wine must taste good knows absolutely nothing about wine…
Only a truly top-flight sommelier could even come close to guessing the price…
What fool, living there, would buy wines costing between ¥100,000 and ¥199,999 a bottle in such quantities?
It has been some twenty years since I used to travel to Europe on business and other matters…
Still, things surely cannot have changed so drastically…
Take, for example, a restaurant in Paris where Parisian men and women went to eat…
It was a restaurant with exceptionally delicious fresh oysters and a superb atmosphere…
There, a wine that would have cost ¥4,000–¥5,000 at a Japanese hotel at the time cost ¥800…
Naturally, it was perfectly delicious.
Generally speaking, Europeans and Americans do not drink wine that costs more than their meal.
The same was true in Rome.
At any restaurant, an inexpensive house wine was perfectly delicious.
If taxpayers’ money is being spent, surely it is only natural to seek out reasonably priced, delicious wines.