Celebrating The Joy of Not Working with 1982 Latour

SHOULD I SPEND $10,000 ON SOME 1982 LATOUR WINE FOR A CELEBRATION OF THE JOY OF NOT WORKING .

Note: I first blogged about 1982 Latour and how it is part of my retirement plan, a way to retire happy and enjoy the finer things in life.

The middle of September will be 20 years since I self-published my international bestseller The Joy of Not Working. This retirement book still sells 5,000 copies a year (now over 250,000 copies sold and published in 17 languages). It has earned me about $650,000 profit over the years and presently earns me about $10,000 a year.

So I am having a celebration about the success of this book with about 20 of my close friends. I am paying for a great meal along with some fine wine at a favorite restaurant.

The Question is: Should I have three or four bottles of 1982 Latour flown in from the U.S.?

I first learned about 1982 Latour from Kevin O'leary of Dragon's Den who stated that two or three hedge fund managers and he would go through three or four bottles of 1982 Latour in one meal at Grille 23 in Boston. (Legend has it that you don't get a hangover from 1982 Latour, but I don't believe that - alcohol is alcohol).

See the article by Kevin O'Leary at Madness of Hedge Fund Managers.

Anyway, I was curious about 1982 Latour. So I checked it out on the Internet. It does not come cheap, starting at about $1,599 a bottle. Some bottles sell for $25,000 or more.

Clearly, I want my guests to experience the best at my celebrations.

So again, should I purchase three or four bottles of 1982 Latour?

I have to keep in mind, however, that various blind studies have shown that people can't actually tell the difference between expensive wines and inexpensive wines.

In fact, one of these studies, published in The Journal of Wine Economics, found that we prefer to drink cheap wine as long as we don't know that it is cheap.

By using brain wave detectors, the researchers for this study found out that people will actually feel better after drinking wine if they are told that the wine is expensive even if isn't.

So the trick is to drink cheap wine while fooling oneself that it isn't. (Easier said than done.)

Of course, for my celebration, the alternative is to purchase three or four empty 1982 Latour bottles and have them filled with inexpensive good wine.

My guests will get great pleasure in drinking this apparently expensive wine.

Of course, I myself will know it is cheap wine so I won't experienceas much pleasure. No problem. I will order one bottle of the real thing and ensure that I drink out of that bottle while the majority of my guests drink the cheap stuff.

Again, there is no off-switch on my genius machine.

One last thought: If my guests find out later about the wine they were drinking, I can always quote Oscar Wilde:

"The secret to life is to find great pleasure in being terribly, terribly deceived."

What do you think? Any other suggestions.

Another Note: The Joy of Not Working and How to Retire Happy, Wild, and Free still keep me a little busy but not enough to be a full time retirement job.