Anonymous

15 Mar 2025

Field Notes
Found #03: Wine


The owner of a small wine bar in Kyoto once told me, "Expensive is easy. It shows a lack of research and imagination. It’s far more satisfying to find unique, reasonably priced wines."

It stuck with me. The same principle applies to any purchase.



The way we search shapes what we find. If we rely on price, we’ll always land on the most expensive option, mistaking cost for quality. But price isn’t always about quality. It’s often a branding tool, a way to signal exclusivity before something is even experienced. Luxury brands, restaurants, and marketers understand this. Sometimes, price has less to do with what’s inside and more to do with what it says about the person buying it.

But a great bottle of wine doesn’t have to be expensive to be meaningful. Neither does a well-made object, a book that stays with you, or a meal you remember for years. Meaning isn’t something you buy. It’s something you uncover through effort, curiosity, and attention.

Price is just one filter, often mistaken for quality. There are others.

Like price, algorithms and rankings create another filter, shaping what we see before we even start looking. “Michelin Awarded” “Hidden Gems” “Best Coffee” What appears is pre-sorted, optimised, and marketed before we even search. Review platforms and content creators reinforce what’s already popular. The most expensive, awarded, and visible rise to the top.

In a world optimised for convenience, true discovery is rare. Everything is ranked, rated, and curated for us before we’ve even formed our own taste. The result? We stop looking.

When everything is filtered for us, it’s easy to confuse visibility with value. If something is ranked highly, it must be good. If it’s expensive, it must be worth it. But what gets lost? Everything that isn’t optimised for attention.

Discovery isn’t about stumbling upon something chosen for us. It’s about learning how to look. A great meal, a well-made object, or a beautiful piece of music doesn’t need a high price or an award to be worth appreciating. It needs someone willing to pay attention.

The beauty isn’t in the having. It’s in the finding.

The most meaningful things in life aren’t competing for attention. They exist quietly, waiting to be found. But they require a different way of looking.

What if we searched differently? Instead of looking for the most expensive or the highest-rated, we asked: Whose business can my purchase make the most difference to? Who is creating value without chasing attention? What is truly overlooked?

Spending more is easy. Looking closer takes effort. But that effort, whether in choosing a bottle of wine or anything else, is what makes taste personal.

And maybe the real value isn’t in what we find, but in how we learn to see.
Found is a new series of field notes on what can be learned from the objects around us.
—
Felix Ng
Co-founder, Anonymous
@felix.anonymous

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