When I first saw this story, I couldn’t stop laughing. But the more I thought about it, the stranger and scarier it became. Of course I know (from lots of first-hand experience) that for many people, wine is entirely a game of status. I’m reminded of the anecdote a friend relayed to me the other day about her experience taking a bunch of very wealthy businessmen around Bordeaux. They stopped at Chateau Latour and one of the businessmen (who up until this point had been bored stiff) looking at the sign at the driveway entrance exclaimed, “Hey, I’ve got some of this stuff in my cellar!”

Certainly some businesspeople think about wine as cultural currency, but you would also think that some of them would actually appreciate it as something more than a price tag. Perhaps more importantly, you would think that a publication like Forbes would have a more nuanced view of the stuff.

Perhaps the holidays brings out the worst in them, as it does many people, for they seem to think that the most important holiday writing they can do on the subject of wine is to convey the extremely important information of what are the most expensive champagnes in the world.

I don’t know about you, but I DEFINITELY needed that information.

Perhaps the only interesting thing about this article is the fact that Krug seems to have such a monopoly on expensive champagne that Forbes is required to come up with categories of champagne that explicitly exclude them.