i agree! i'm always picking wine from the 3 for $9/10 section of my local Woodman's, it never disappoints and my friends, family, and company (yes, i even serve my dates cheap wine) never complain...even if they are wise to the price!!

i've never been ashamed of being frugal, so it sure is nice to see this article :) i think i'll even grab some wine for dinner tonight!

Any decent wine tasting I've been to, sommeliers and well versed wine enthusiasts will tell the people there- wine is essentially wine, pricey or not. Yes, there are good wines worth the hefty price tag, but if it tastes good to you, drink it, don't assume its better cause it costs more. I always remember my husband and I received an amazing rare bottle of Dom Perignon as a wedding gift we held on to for a year before we finally just decided to drink it. And it was...just ok. I love a good glass of champagne, my favorite being about 40-50 dollars a bottle, but the Dom just tasted blah to us compared to a number of cheaper champagnes or sparkling wines. Price doesn't guarantee you'll love it.

Our local liquor store recently held a wine tasting where we had to choose which was the cheap (<$10) bottle vs. the more expensive (>$20) bottle of the same varietal from similar regions. Nearly everyone, including myself, got most of them wrong.

Lesson learned? Stick with cheap wine, because I, and most other people, clearly cannot tell the difference. :-)

I love this! I'm always buying wine that's $4-6... I have a harder time finding red wine at that price point that doesn't taste too sharp for me but it's ok because I like white wine better anyway and that's easy.

The Slate article made some good points, like that many people can't pick out the "better" wine in a blind taste test and that price doesn't guarantee quality. That said, the advice that people should never pay more than $3 for a bottle shows the author's belief that all interest in wine is snobbery.

In my experience, there's a huge upgrade in what's available for <$5 versus $10-15. After that, there's significant diminishing returns. Sure, there really great $30 wines that are better than anything you can get for $15, but are they twice is good? Not to me.

That's the same as any other food product. There's a big upgrade from store-brand cheddar to the 2-year cheddar from a smaller producer. After that you can pay a lot more for the specialty artisan cheeses, which will, on average, have more interesting flavors, but for many people it's just not worth the money.

Well said, @GreenFlurry!

Ehhh...I'll dissent. My sweet spot for wine is between $11 and $17 or so. BUT I'm only able to drink one bottle a week. For me, it feels like so much more of a "treat" if I'm pouring out of a nice, heavy bottle with a lovely label. I have loved me some $6 wines, and I suppose I'm exactly the person wineries are targeting, but when I put the baby in bed and allow myself that one 5oz glass, it's so worth it to have spent some money and have chosen carefully.

I also agree with GreenFlurry above. Your $3 bottle is just NOT comparable with your $10 bottle. It's just not. And I also find that what matters more than price is the wine buyer's selection at your purveyor of choice. It's super-hard to buy a total clunker at Costco. TJ's is hit-or-miss. Our local "big" liquor store is even more hit-or-miss (I'm thinking of the $17 Valpolicella I had to pour out, yech). So buy from a place you like and trust!

Aaand, having lived in Europe, I'll also offer that many of those cultures are NOT wine cultures, they are BEER cultures (Germany). Sure, a German may spend 1.79 euros on a bottle, but you really should be drinking the beer instead. I found most wines available at that price, or available at all, to be sorely lacking. 1.79 for table wine from a barrel in the south of France is one thing. 1.79 for a bottle of plonk from the Albert Heijn is another. /rant

Looks like this article hit some nerves, ha. I agree with the article. I've often found that I'm just as happy spending $5 on a bottle (at TJ's) as $15, so why spend the $15?? I've got better things to do with that extra $10... :)

I like to buy a case of what I call "Wednesday wines" from Trader Joe's every few months. I spend $3-$7 a bottle for everyday drinking. I have nicer bottles at home that we like to open up on special occasions, but for the most part, these "Wednesday wines" work great for just about all occasions. The other benefit to TJs is that the wines tend to be unique, so no one will know you're serving cheaper wine!

Everyday wine is anything from two buck chuck at Trader Joe's up to a $10 bottle of anything else. Above $10 is for special occasions.

I'm with @GreenFlurry here. If you enjoy wine the way most readers of this blog enjoy food (which is by no means necessary, I'm just saying this for the sake of argument) then you enjoy the character and consideration that goes into the production of those single vineyard wines that tend to be more expensive. Nothing more, nothing less. I'm happy to have a relatively cheap bottle on an average night, the same way I'm happy to have a modest meal or even "eh" quality takeout. If I want to appreciate the wine, I'll invest, the same way I would in best-quality ingredients for a nice meal.

Accordingly, it's totally a personal choice. I truly enjoy experiencing wine (as a component of the meal, not just something to drink) so I think buying wine at a higher price point is worth it. If someone is say, a beef enthusiast, and wants to get some Wagyu beef I could never dream of buying, more power to them too, you know?

Also, wine is cheaper in Europe because of differences in the distribution and wholesaling process; it's probably not helpful to compare their numbers with American ones.

Thank you! I never spend more than $10 on wine to drink for no special reason. Every now and then, I'll spend up to $20 (but more commonly only up to $15) for something special. And most of the time, I'm buying two buck chuck. Maybe if I made a lot more money, I'd spend more on wine, but probably not. As long as I enjoy it, I don't care that it only cost me $5! Come on!

Just to be clear, I wasn't saying that people shouldn't buy wine under $5 or $10. People should drink what they like, and most of us have budgets that require a fair amount of $5 bottles (or $15 boxes) of wine if wine is something that's going to be consumed regularly with meals.

My quibble with the Slate article is it's assumption that there's nothing to be gained from spending more than $3 because the idea of "good wine" is proof that "a small group of people have gotten very good at sniffing out the traits that the wine industry thinks entitle them to more money.

I knew I wasn't crazy! I really enjoy many wines that are under $10 at the local liquor store, Trader Joes, and Whole Foods.

Also, when I was in the south of France this summer, I marveled at the wine everyone was purchasing for dinner. Most expensive wine someone bought? 5 euros. This was standard.

Hooray!

Never been able to drink a cheap bottle of Amarone.... , For the rest of it, it's fairly true, should have a listing of cheap wines for T-day.

I mostly drink wines in the $8-13 range, occasionally going up or down. But I drink mostly reds, and think that for the most part, anything cheaper than that tastes pretty sharp.

Interesting point about some wineries...if they have a surplus, some will either sell it for vinegar or relabel it rather than mark down the price of their particular brand.

Good cheap wine: Aldi's Shiraz. Bought some to cook with and was surprised at how good it was. Also, the WineCube! I like their Pinot Grigio. Roughly $11 for two bottles worth!

It's hard to get the good cheap stuff here; at least it is in my local (provincially-controlled) liquor store.

In Europe good cheap wine is abundant... it's everywhere... One of the best wines we ever had was a $7 bottle of Cabernet Franc we bought at the airport in Paris -- pizza wine.

Or, believe it or not, Czech wine. Lovely stuff that you won't find elsewhere because they don't make enough to export (ditto Swiss wine).

Oh... now I want to move back to Europe...

I find this advice may hold true for white wine, but reds are a whole other story. My sweet spot for reds is the $10-20 range. But then I don't drink wine daily, more once every couple weeks, or with a special dinner. That being said, Costco has a great selection of wine, and I've only been disappointed a handful of times. Not so for other retailers. But I'm much more of a cocktail person anyhow.

I live in Toronto, Canada - Home of the overpriced LCBO monopoly. I can't get a drinkable bottle of wine for under $12 that doesn't give me a "sour face" when I take a sip. I find the pricepoint of everyday drinking wine is $17-$20. A rip-off yes. But wines that I actually enjoy (on my budget) tend to be $25-$30.
So frustrating....

Ugh, Pennsylvania's outdated liquor laws are totally holding me back.

My favorite brand (?) of wine is Yellowtail, which is Australian and generally costs between $6-$10 at the liquor store. Good wine, good price, and I certainly can't tell the difference between that and a fancy-schmancy $30 bottle of wine.

Those of you who think you can't find a bottle of good red for under $17.00 should visit a Trader Joe's. They have info on many of the wines with wine spectator points. Many wines from all over the world. Try the Blue Fin from Napa, Ca. the Pinot Noir and the Chardonnay are both very nice. and under $10.00.

@lasomnambule, I agree! I just wait until the 14.99 bottles are on sale for 8.99, early in the holidays at grocery stores, that's when I restock my bar for the holidays, the really decent wines Coppola, La Creme, Chalk Hill are often dirt cheap. From 14.99 to 46.99 to 8.99 to 27.99

I attended a seminar yesterday about preferences within the dry red wine market. They selected the top-rated dry reds and did blind tastings with a trained tasting panel, label preference (with varying "expert scores") and blind tasting with a consumer panel.

They found no correlation between the price and people's preference either. The design of the label, region of origin and wine STYLE was much more significant than anything else.

The presenter pointed out that numerous studies have shown that people will pick wine based on price if they have the option.

Just to promote my local wine - South African wines are pretty good and the reds are often a bit mellower than the classic French style. So, if it comes from the Western Cape in South Africa (and especially the Boland), it's usually pretty good - even better if you let it mature for a year or two.

I live in PA and buy most of my wines under $12. It's rare for me to go above that. Most really are $10 or under. I also never buy wine that isn't one sale. I just run around and grab some that look good and am rarely disappointed.

I. Agree. With these words.

@Lorna23 I'm in Toronto as well and although $3 wines just plain do not exist here thanks to the LCBO, I've found that there're lots of options as far as cheap-but-good wine goes! I rarely spend more than $10 on wine for home and when I feel like being fancy $16 (in the Vintages section) is my usual limit.

Maybe try some of Billly Munnelly's suggestions (http://www.billysbestbottles.com/the-blog/) sometime. He's awesome!

There is definitely some upsell in the fancier labels and costs of many of the wines people drink. My favorite is a sweet red, and the difference between Barefoot ($6 for 750mL), Sutter Home ($10-12 for 750mL) and Liberty Creek ($6.49 for 1L) isn't worth the smaller bottles from a nicer vineyard. However I do buy a $12-13 bottle of Vampire yearly and also some other specialty wines from locals, but the $40 2002 Peter paul my husband brought home from work wasn't any better or worse than even a younger vintage of Vampire.

Want some nice bang for your buck?
Try "releaf" organic both red and white.
Found the red to be wonderful at $8.99
and the white better than ok at a buck less.
If you are hung up on a S. African point of origin that's another thing but solid quality/value relationship is found here methinks.

I've regularly had wines across the price spectrum, and I'll hold firm to my belief that the difference in price is entirely indicative of the next morning's hangover or lack thereof. Less than $15 and I'm always regretting it in the morning, regardless of any other mitigating factors. (Goes without saying I'm not a one-glass gal.)

I also know that regardless of price or reviews, I'll never have a glass of wine I enjoy more than those made and poured in the Santa Ynez Valley.

A previous roommate of mine would swear by box wine. Since it's airtight she may have been right. Staceyann Dolenti

$3 is not good unless it's $10 wine on sale for $3. I can definitely tell the difference between cheap wine and really cheap wine.

I don't know. My husband and I really got into wine a few years ago. As much as I would like to drink 2 buck chuck - it tastes so sugery and cheap to me. We have a few 8.99 bottles that we like for everyday, but most really really good wines are at a little bit higher of a price point for me. I have yet to find a really good bottle of red for under $5. I think good cheap wine in Europe is more plentiful.