Expensive Glass of Crap

Okay, so Wine Is Classy. The classiest of wine drinkers can tell you the difference between the wine of 1993 and 1995 from their favorite vineyard. And then this jokester shows up. He presents a bottle of bum wine from the corner store as a fancy wine much more expensive than it actually is. And the drinkers never catch on, enjoying the cheap wine. In subversions, the drinker catches on, or in extreme cases is harmed by the substitute.

This can effect any commodity that is perceived to be mainly appreciated by snobs, not just wine. The object has to be presented as a quality brand, but doesn't have to be a real brand.

(Note: This does not cover blind taste tests. Differences [or lack thereof] between brands goes in Brand Names Are Better.)

Examples of Expensive Glass of Crap include:

Anime

• Lupin III: In "The Sleight Before Christmas", the gang steals a bottle of wine being given as a gift to the US President, that was originally supposed to be a gift from Napoleon to Empress Josephine, and replace it with a much newer bottle of wine. Lupin and his crew watch the president enjoy the fake bottle of wine on TV. Then they open theirs and realize that they've stolen a 200 yr old bottle of vinegar.
• In KonoSuba, Kazuma goes went into a confession both and confessed to a priest he knew was his party member ways he has wronged her and talks trash about her. One of the things he said was he drank all of her expensive rare wine she was bragging about, and then replaced it with something cheap since he figured she wouldn't be able to tell the difference.

Comics

• In the Serenity comic "Wash Out", fancy-ish champagne is switched for cheap rotgut at Wash's eulogy. Justified in that Wash liked the rotgut better.

Film

• Played for Laughs in The Muppet Movie, with Steve Martin as the alleged sommelier, offering Kermit and Piggy a wine "from the vineyards of Idaho".

"Would monsieur care to sniff the bottle-cap?"

Literature

• The Roald Dahl short story The Butler told of a homeowner who developed a taste in wine, sought to amass a large wine collection and lectured his guests extensively on the subject. The story's end reveals that his butler, who guided him on his journey, had been fooling him and had always served him the same cheap blend.

Live Action TV

• Penn and Teller Bullshit:
  • In the episode "The Best" they pass off items ranging from a tv-dinner to canned tomatoes as the best ingredients to diners. They also use a real review for an expensive wine to describe a cheap wine. Most of the diners enjoy their dinner.
  • In another episode, they have a guy go into a restaurant and offer dinners speciality bottled waters with different descriptions. They were all filled with tap water from the same hose.
  • In the "Organic Food" episode, they have people taste-test two banana halves, one organic and one regular. The majority prefer the "organic". Both are actually regular.
• Played With on All in The Family. An old friend of Archie's is coming over, he likes an expensive scotch. Archie gets an empty bottle of the expensive stuff and fills it with a cheap scotch instead, saying his buddy won't know the difference. When the friend comes over, he mentions that he's been having money trouble and is forced to drink substandard scotch; his taste buds have gotten so used to it that even the fine scotch Archie is serving him tastes like the cheap stuff now.
• Bones: The Victim of the Week is a wine critic; he's killed by a man who he discovered was bootlegging expensive wine, filling knockoff bottles with his cheaper wine
• CSI: NY had an episode where cheap wine was being passed off as expensive, though that wasn't ultimately why the vic was killed-it involved the killer trying to squash the guy's jewelled cockroach.
• In Black Books, Manny and Bernard housesit for a friend and accidentally drink a ridiculously expensive and rare bottle of wine he was going to present as a gift to the pope. They brew their own and put it in the bottle, reasoning that "all wine tastes the same". Their brew kills the pope and the friend arrested for it.

Mythology

• Referred to in The Bible, the story of the wedding at Cana; It was the custom to switch out the good wine for inferior stuff once the guests were buzzed, but Jesus turns water into the good stuff and people can tell the difference.

Real Life

• During the Nazi occupation of France, many wine merchants would run a scam against Nazi officers by sprinkling dust on bottles of cheap plonk to pass it off as old and valuable, or swap labels from terrible vintage years with good ones. This was a dangerous game to run, since many top Nazi officials (especially Goering) were avid wine connoisseurs and could taste the difference.
• Pepsi, to compete with Coca-Cola, decided at one point^[when?] to sell their product in bottles that were not only larger than Coke's, but also cheaper at a nickel, as opposed to 10 cents for a Coke. Often, people would buy the Pepsi, but then pour it into empty Coke bottles for their guests to make it seem like they were willing to pay for the more expensive pop.