PrepTest 117, Section 2, Question 9
In addition to the labor and materials used(33 more words not shown)
Which one of the following(8 more words not shown)
- AThe price of(12 more words not shown)
- BPrice is never(11 more words not shown)
- CThe reputation of(11 more words not shown)
- DThe reputation of(18 more words not shown)
- EWines produced by(11 more words not shown)
Reading the argument
What if the vineyard has a great reputation because it makes great wine?
The author says reputation affects price, alongside labor and materials. That sounds reasonable: a well-known vineyard may charge more. But why does that show that an expensive wine isn't always good? We haven't yet established that reputation can pull the price away from quality.
Maybe every vineyard with a strong reputation earns it by consistently producing good wine. Or maybe some vineyards keep charging a premium after the quality slips. Both stories fit the idea that reputation affects price. The author needs the second sort of possibility to make this argument: reputation doesn't always accurately reflect what is in the bottle.
What we’re looking for
For the necessary-assumption question, look for that break between reputation and quality. We're checking what this reasoning requires, not stating a rule about what wine ought to cost or how much of its price comes from each factor.
Working the answers
- A
This tells us what the price should reflect. The argument concerns what it does reflect and whether an expensive wine is always good. The author could think prices should track quality, or could think vineyards may charge whatever buyers will pay. Neither position supplies the needed gap between reputation and quality.
- B
Never is far too strong. The conclusion is that an expensive wine isn't always good, not that price can never tell us anything about quality. Some expensive wines could be excellent, and some price comparisons could be informative. The argument only needs the proposed connection to fail sometimes.
- CCorrect
Reputation doesn't always indicate the quality of a vineyard's wines. This lets reputation help explain a high price without guaranteeing that the wine is good.
Suppose instead that reputation always accurately reflected quality. Then pointing to a vineyard's good reputation as a reason for its high price wouldn't establish the problem the author claims: the reputation itself would still track good wine. C is the assumption needed for the author's use of reputation to support the conclusion.
- D
We don't need reputation to outweigh grape quality in setting prices. It could account for 10 percent, 30 percent, or some other share; the passage doesn't quantify that. The issue is whether reputation always tracks quality, not whether its contribution to price is larger than another factor's contribution.
- E
The argument doesn't require lesser-known vineyards to price their wines accurately. Those vineyards could overcharge too, or their prices could vary for other reasons. Nothing about the claim that some expensive wines aren't good requires this separate group to have prices that generally match quality.
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