Leather bound is luxury
Vol #273: May 14th, 2026
The feel of a crisp binding and smooth cover is a sensual experience. When the spine cracks and the edges fray, a good book develops even more character.
I’m hardly the poster child for this preservation society - most of my reading time is on a kindle. Convenient enough to fit in my pocket and practical enough to hold several dozen volumes. But hardly shelfworthy.
I’d like to believe it’s the content that matters. Engaging or well curated writing should cut through the medium - and yet, if I get passed a QR code or a tablet in a restaurant, minus two points off the bat.
Hemingway may have ruled the Left Bank, but there’s something different about turning the pages at La Tour d’Argent. In this bastion of haute French cuisine they wheel over a little cart, upon which sits a four inch thick, bound leather volume. Vertical after vertical of every prestigious estate. This isn’t a tightly curated Man Booker shortlist, but an Encyclopedia Britannica of every bottle of wine that matters.
Just like the perfectly choreographed service, and tables aligned so that everyone gets a view of Notre Dame - this is as much about the show as anything. In fact, if you look at most Michelin star restaurants, their wine lists are pretty similar. Krug and Dom Perignon appear on 42% of these. Good bubbles for sure, but hardly an insightful selection.
Pairing is a complex balance of the individual, the product, and the context. Defaults are useful, but judgement is singular.
It’s easy to say what the most expensive wine is, or on any given evening what the wine of the night was. But other than Chateau d’Yquem for Sauternes, there really is no objectively best wine. For you, the food, or Bob your uncle.
If either wine or data tickle your fancy, you won’t find a more interesting article than Sara Danese’s analysis of the wine lists at over 1,000 fine dining restaurants. As prices for these luxury experiences soar (the average three star charges $365 for their tasting menu), the wine prices have followed, and that’s turning people off.
There’s a question of not only the homogenization of these products, but also the lack of reasonably priced, or even good value for the money wines. If you’re spending $50 or $500, the only thing worse than a corked bottle is overpaying for something underwhelming.
Whether you’re in fine wine or high finance, beige is not the color to be. Especially when you’re being charged for sparkle. And yet in both of these domains there are significant structural factors that are leading to increasingly generic experiences.
In the wine world, there are a few palates- collective or individual - that exert outsized influence over price and taste. Robert Parker famously bent the world’s wine regions to produce his ideal expression. Institutions like the Court of Master Sommeliers create a standard for which regions and even producers are the most “typical.” I’m a sucker for that pencil shaving, burst of violet Pauillac, but that doesn’t mean it’s the only way to make wine in the Médoc.
If there is any individual that has shaped the hive mind of investors, it’s Jack Bogle. The king of indexing, his legacy lives on in the many Boglehead communities out there, dedicated to low fees and diversification.
Parker got many things right, and I’m generally inclined to agree with Jack. The cheapest and broadest exposure to the market is my baseline for crafting any portfolio. Particularly for the amateur who wants to spend their time on something more interesting.
The critiques of indexing center around things like governance and price discovery. If investors aren’t making active decisions about how well a company is managing its opportunity or what the fair value of that is, the market prices become distorted. There’s a whole canon of literature about the significant and structural “passive bid” out there.
It’s good and practical advice, but not exactly Michelin star quality. If every smashburger served under an edison bulb tastes exactly the same - frankly that’s a win. But when you’re paying fine dining prices, you should be getting something unique and personalized.
The pairing analogy extends here also. While I’m a deeply biased Francophile, the fact that 60% of lists are controlled by these (exceptional, unparalleled) regions, isn’t exactly a unique insight. Burgundy is the ideal pairing for a coq au vin or any of the mother sauces. But if I’m in Turin or Tokyo, you want something more contextually appropriate.
The “Risk Test Questionnaire” is how advisors are meant to pair their clients with the appropriate investments. Yet for the most part these are less than a dozen multiple choice questions with a High/Medium/Low scoring system. I’ll talk my own book here and say there are a lot more ways you need to think about risk with an options strategy.
Timing matters for both the soufflé and the market. People change, circumstances arise, and performance shifts. Matching individuals to investments is a dynamic process that isn’t necessarily served by default options, no matter how good they are. If you’re doing this on your own you need to stay vigilant, and if you’ve outsourced it you need to stay on top of your advisor.
No matter what business you’re in, you’re going to work with distributors. Wine and investment products both thrive and suffer from the access this group provides. Gatekeepers of the product, their menu dictates what’s available.
In a 401(k) we’re often stuck with lackluster options because of the company’s fiduciary responsibility, but also because of what a given broker is willing or able to provide. Many advisors access the markets through platforms which allow them to outsource everything from research to model selection and rebalancing.
The choices available to managers are going to dictate how they’re able to serve you. Dividend futures might be the perfect slice of risk, but without access to the CME or an ETF that wraps this, you’re left to either DIY or accept an alternative.
While restaurants might have to worry about the health department, it’s nothing compared to the regulation elephant in the room for the financial industry. For the most part the rules are good and well intentioned. I have very high praise for the comment and rulemaking process.
But the rules often leave practitioners running scared. Perhaps in the same way that Michelin’s proclivity for precisely composed dishes threatens every three star to look the same, the risk of being different is severely punished in asset management. Creative isn’t always synonymous with snake oil or high risk.
Sitting in the customer seat, you’re absolutely in charge. Retail traders have more power than ever, but that doesn’t eliminate opacity. The savvy customer pays attention to the forces behind the scenes.
There are still a few bargains out there on wine lists, though I’m not telling anyone where. And the best restaurants and advisors are absolutely worth the price tag, it’s just worth knowing where the value is, and what the forces are that shape it.
The point is not to reject the house list or the model portfolio. The point is to know what you’re paying for convenience versus what’s real insight.