"Quality" is a loose term, preference is totally subjective. Most people mix those things up, but there aren't equal. You don't automatically like the "better"

"Quality" is a loose term, preference is totally subjective. Most people mix those things up, but there aren't equal. You don't automatically like the "better" wine, or better food. But the trend is the more people know about X (where X = wine in this case), they like "better" X. Where "better" and "quality" has to be defined first. Typically, if you go down the path of wine education, you first learn a definition of what makes a wine good. WSET [0] e.g. mentions balance, complexity, faults, finish etc as part of what makes a wine "good" (by their definition). If you want to be certified by WSET (Level 3), you have to pass a tasting exam, where you have to examine wines according to their scheme. Regular people aren't trained in wine or sensory evaluation, thus "quality" means less to them and cheaper wines are often easier to drink, or people are more familiar with them so they like them more (see "mere-exposure effect" [1]). tl;dr: Liking a wine != the wine is "good". But mixing up those two things make no sense. [0] https://www.wsetglobal.com/ https://www.wsetglobal.com/ [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mere-exposure_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mere-exposure_effect