A paper presented to the Annual General Meeting of the ACU
at the Great Fountain, Café Chabot, Aiguèze, July 2001
By Robbi Beuttler, Minister Without Portfolio

Every July for 9 years I have been buying wine at the Bar at Aiguèze. Every year the prices are increased, as is usual. But this year I have noticed a very strange thing: The prices increase in such a way that, if one buys a large enough volume, the extra wine will be free.

In support of this I present the current wine prices at the bar:

Vol   (L)   0.25 0.50  1.00  
Price (FF)  15   22    30

These are shown graphically in Fig 1 below

This is an assymptotic curve tending to a limiting price of around 36 francs for an infinite amount of wine (but see footnote). However, even the ACU cannot drink so much wine (in one sitting) so I wondered what Annie would charge for 1.5 litres.

It is clear that extrapolation of the curve predicts a price of approximately 34 francs for 1.5 litres of wine, so I asked Annie,the Patron, how much it would cost to buy 1.5 litres of wine. Annie replied "52 francs" (that being the sum of 0.5 L and 1.0 L).

At this point I demonstrated my scientific researches, whereupon Annie agreed that we could have the 1.5L bottle (a magnum) for 34 francs. So we paid only 4 francs for the extra half litre! (VMAADOOD).(Click  the photo for a larger image)
Click for Tom with the 1.5 L bottle...

Footnote: This is not strictly true. Since Annie sells wine from only Aiguèze producers there is, in fact, a finite supply. But this is still more than the ACU can manage.

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Updated 15 December 2002