Pumpkin spice products are already in grocery stores in July

Oh I'm convinced that the demand for fancy booze is pretty much entirely marketing.

First of all, wine is almost entirely judged by its packaging. Take Franzia, that extremely mid boxed wine, put it in a striking bottle with a real wood cork and a fancy or trendy looking label and people will start discussing bouquet and mouthfeel.

Beer (and I will pause after typing this parenthetical to take a swig from my Red Oak Bavarian Amber Lager) tastes kinda like puke. Like orange juice after brushing your teeth. Fancy schmancy beers will taste like burned oatmeal, and the craft beer industry died and now there's just IPAs which taste like yesterday's grass clippings and the occasional "we're not as big as Budweiser" company making "Amber lager".

As for spirits, vodka outsells fancy aged whiskies by a WIDE margin, and while flavors can be found in whiskey, a bottle of Pappy or Blantons or whatever ain't worth thousands of dollars, it's all just Buffalo Trace.

I've seen footage of a restaurant where rich people pay hundreds if not thousands of dollars to have chocolate sauce poured into their bare hands from a gravy boat. I've heard this phenomenon explained by the axiom "poor people prioritize quantity, middle class prioritize quality, and the rich prioritize experience." So the best you're going to get is a $40 bottle of scotch, because a $40,000 bottle of scotch will be the same booze in a really, really complicated bottle.

Have you ever had Johnny Walker Blue? It taste like ash. Johnny Walker Red is honestly a better experience, because it tastes like whisky. Johnny Walker Blue is more expensive because they tell you it is.