Asklemmy

I'll agree on the wine front, but I also don't care for wine much. Never developed a palate for it.

But liquor, very much disagree. If you're one to enjoy a scotch on the rocks or something, there's a huge difference in taste once you splurge and get the good $100+/bottle stuff. And the cheap liquor always gives me a bad hangover.

I'll disagree to a point on liquor.

I like single-malt Scottish whiskey. I like Islays the most, followed by Speysides, Cambelltowns, Highlands, and Lowlands (in that order). I've found that, generally speaking, the longer a whiskey has been aged, the better it's going to be at mellowing out the harsher flavors in a given distillery's offerings. Compared to blended whiskeys--which are usually cheaper--single malt, and single barrel are a better experience in my opinion. I'm usually paying $50-200 for something that I'll really enjoy, with most being in the $100-150 range.

But $5000 for a 40yo bottle of Macallen? Absolutely not.

IMHO, there are two price bands for wine: under-$10, and over. I have an unsophisticated palette, but I can tell a cheap wine from a not-cheap one. I can't tell a not-cheap one from an expensive one, though. Some really expensive wines taste like crap to me, worse than the mid-range ones. That's the only time I can pick out on expensive wine: it might taste bad, but it doesn't taste cheap.

There were some often-quoted tests in which even professional sommeliers could not tell the difference between super-expensive wines and much cheaper ones. See this article on The Guardian for instance

I am picky but it doesn't correlate directly with price. Wine, no. I don't like wine enough to like bad wine so just saving money by drinking it rarely(maybe 6xa year) but buying the ones I actually do like works better. They are between 30-50 USD but again, maybe 5 or 6 bottles a year at most.

Liquor - I have favorites but they are mostly not high end stuff. Evan Williams bottled-in-bond is fantastic and so cheap. ABK6 cognac and vodka are great. Tequila, I like a few and none are too spendy.

Liqueurs though, and mezcal- paying more does seem to make a huge difference in these. The good ones are better than the cheaper analogues.

See The Judgment of Paris or Brochet's study.

I'm a classic ____ and coke person myself, and I've settled with Evan Williams White label with RC Cola, almost indistinguishable from Jack and Coke for well under half the price at probably twice the ABV. And the more I drink, the less I care.

My father fancies himself a wine connoisseur, and 75% of what he buys are in the $20-30 range if not less.

There used to be a book that would come out every year in Canada called Billy's Best Bottles. It's premise was exactly what you just said: that we basically are living in a golden age of wine, where even cheap bottles of wine can be incredibly good. Not only are many cheap wines good, but he also identified that the upper end of wine, for most people, need never exceed about $35 a bottle because the vast majority of people in blind taste testing can't tell the difference between a good $35 bottle and anything more expensive than that.