I'm as committed a rationalist as they come, and am the first to call bullshit when it comes to professional bullshit artists wanking over the "personality" of

I'm as committed a rationalist as they come, and am the first to call bullshit when it comes to professional bullshit artists wanking over the "personality" of an $80 bottle of wine. Most of my time spent at tasting rooms consists of mentally rolling my eyes at the conversations I'm overhearing. So, as a self-identified wine skeptic who just really happens to like wine, I've gotta admit: there is a huge difference between a good $15-$18 bottle of wine and a good $5-$7 bottle of wine. To me. My spouse and I have even played "guess the bottle" in this price range, and believe me it's not as hard as you'd think. My tastes have, annoyingly, elevated over the years--annoying because $18 nightly bottles are out my budget. It's as though I crossed some sort of wine rubicon. I would agree with the point you are making at a higher price range, but mere mortals really can appreciate spending an extra $10 on a cheap bottle of wine, I claim. I'll say one thing though--the author is spot on about how much cheaper good wine is in Europe. Trying to buy wine at a Carrefour in Valencia last summer, we searched high and low for anything in our "splurge range" (~15 euros) before realizing that maybe the fact that 90% of the shelf was priced at a third that was trying to tell us something.