Gourmet Groceries -- for More!

By Joel Stein

Oh yes, I came to mock. coffee for $600 a pound? Fifty dollars for a pack of three 1-lb. (0.45 kg) tubes of butter? A liter of olive oil for $182? A $120 bottle of beer? I am an intolerable food snob, but I am also from middle-class New Jersey, and the upper reaches of the grocery aisles can make me want to smash something, like a tiny bottle of $145 balsamic vinegar that comes in a box with a 106-page book.

No food, it seems, is safe these days from being repackaged in a shiny platinum case as an upscale product--there's even a $40 bottle of water designed by a Hollywood producer and sold in a frosted-glass container affixed with Swarovski crystals. I don't know if economists use bottled water as a measure of financial well-being, but there must be a growing split between the rich and the poor. Because even as some people worry about being able to put any kind of food on the table, the sales of specialty foods are up 17% over the past two years (compared with 4% for overall food sales). "The financial situation hasn't hurt us," says Andy Arons, CEO of New York City's Gourmet Garage stores. "I don't think that people necessarily skimp on eating well in hard times. Maybe 10 years ago, splurging on food seemed foreign, but when you are in a world where people pay $4 a day for a Starbucks coffee, an expensive butter doesn't seem that extravagant." If this was the way food vendors and consumers were thinking, it was clearly up to me to collect a bunch of these expensive items to bring them down, to try to stem the contagion of snottification.

But damn the beer. Samuel Adams' $120 Utopias, in a ridiculous copper-covered 24-oz. (710 mL) bottle meant to resemble an old-fashioned brew kettle, looked like the perfect candidate for a smackdown. First off, it's barely a beer. It's not carbonated like a Bud but aged in oak barrels like scotch, and it has a vintage year, like a Bordeaux. It is also unbelievably delicious--like a port flavored with malt and a touch of bite from the hops, and somehow light, complex and free of any alcohol sting, despite having six times as much alcohol content as a regular can of brew. It was better than most $100 wines I've tasted. I shared it with three people, all equally ready to make fun of it, and they each wanted to know where they could buy it for a gift.

Some other insanely priced foods I sampled were also impressive. The Lambda olive oil from Greece, retailing at $182 for 1,000 mL, came packaged in more gift-box euphoria than anything Tiffany could imagine. The company says it presses its olives less than 10 hours after they're picked, which didn't impress me all that much--how long do people normally leave olives sitting around?--but the oil really was intense, with an acidless buttery, fruity, peppery flavor. You're supposed to use it on vegetables or with bread--though I still wouldn't pay this much even for an olive oil that made me psyched to eat zucchini. The Five Star Butter Co.'s raw, organic butter comes in a comfortingly simple plastic tube, since it's sold mostly to high-end restaurants that put it in their own molds before serving it. The company has the guts to call it the Best Butter on Earth, and at 83% butterfat, it is deeply creamy, almost more like cheese than butter. And Manicardi's 25-year-old balsamic vinegar, $145 for a 100-mL bottle, was so sweet, thick and smooth that it finally made me understand what all those other balsamics have been going for. I drizzled it over ice cream and felt like a mean rich kid in an '80s movie.

In the end, I decided I was not willing to pay $180 for a bit of oil, no matter how good it is. Of course, I am not willing to pay $40,000 for a car either. But I now understand how a beer can be worth $100 and that a butter junkie isn't a reprobate for dropping $50 on a fix. And if you're somehow rich enough, there may be times when kicking back and enjoying an insanely expensive vinegar makes sense.

Still, if you pay $40 for a bottle of Bling H2O water, you're an ass.

Vinegar $145 100-mL bottle of Manicardi balsamic

Beer $120 24-oz. bottle of Samuel Adams Utopias

Olive oil $182 1,000-mL gift pack of Lambda

Water $40 750-mL bottle of Bling H2O

THE ULTIMATE TASTE TEST Our man samples some of the costliest comestibles [This article contains a table. Please see hardcopy of magazine.] THE PRICE $120 24-oz. bottle of Samuel Adams Utopias beer $50 3-lb. container of the Best Butter on Earth $182 A set of two 500-mL bottles of Lambda olive oil WHY IT COSTS SO MUCH The brandy-colored beverage is a blend of malts aged in wood, then finished in sherry and Madeira casks The Five Star Butter Co. makes its lavish 83%-butterfat product from fresh, unpasteurized milk Hand-extracted from Koroneiki olives, the low-acidity and fruity extra-virgin oil comes in a bespoke gift box HOW IT RATES WITH JOEL Malty, portlike, complex. Is it really beer? Probably not. But it's really good Really rich but not dark--just clean-tasting creaminess. Almost like cheese Lots of fruit, pepper and fattiness without acidity. Different from dark, nutty Italian oils

With reporting by With Reporting by Lisa McLaughlin