10% of market and wine experts are real. The rest is overpriced wines of doubtful quality, fake prices just to give prestige, and so forth. As a rule of thumb,

10% of market and wine experts are real. The rest is overpriced wines of doubtful quality, fake prices just to give prestige, and so forth. As a rule of thumb, spending 20-50 euros per bottle you can drink italian top wines (French wines are more costly). If you are spending 350 euros for a bottle of Sassicaia or paying a Bordeaux 800 euros, you are probably misleaded by the market. It's not that a top quality Bordeaux is not a great wine, but after the 30/40 euros the quality gain is only marginal and non linear at all, so sometimes a cheaper wine of a less famous maker is going to be better than a wine you pay a lot. 90% of trained customers (the ones that did some kind of 3 months course) can't tell great wines from mediocre wines apart. Bonus: want to drink a top quality italian wine spending just 30 euros? Buy a couple of bottles of Passorosso by Franchetti. Etna Red, Sicily. Drink it together with some top quality French pinot noir and tell me if it's not on par.