What is your idea of cheap,moderate& expensive wines

Less than $20

Between $20 and $40.

$40 or more.

For me that is.

Salut/Hi Dee Randall,

le/on Fri, 21 Nov 2003 20:45:11 -0500, tu disais/you said:-

under €3

€3 to €15

Very hard to answer because many, many wines are expensive for what they are irrespective of the price.

over €15

Under $8 US

$8.01 to $30

$30.01 and up.

These are just generalizations- I might well refer to $10 Burgundy as cheap, yet consider $35 moderately priced for a good 1er Cru. I'm not consistent. I just came up with the ranges based on: cheap: Betsy, feel free to use for cooking expensive: I only buy 1 or 2 bottles, for special occasions

Dale

Dale Williams Drop "damnspam" to reply

Will you also consider currency differences and relative costs of living in different countries? How about taxes? When I buy in Norway it is

1) below 85NOK 2) 85-100NOK 3) above 100NOK In Germany it would be 1) below 7EUR 2) 7-12EUR 3) above 12EUR In Sweden, it would be... well, do you want me to go on? :-) Anders

LOL!! My definitions keep slipping upward as the cost of living (and my income) increase. When I first started buying wine in the late '70s, the cutoffs were $3 and $10. Now they are $10 and $30. I expect that within another year or two, they will have increased by another $2-5. C'est la vie...

Mark Lipton

Less than $15

$16-$30

$30+

I would also add:

4) too expensive for me to justify at any quality

around $65-$75+

5) Sweet Spot

Usually between $20-$30.

Dark Helmet

Mark Lipton wrote in

late

I think the chianti classico that I used to love (my first real "premium" wine was like $2.50 a bottle a huge price to pay but my first case purchase as well)

Does anyone else find the proliferation of $50 Chianti Reservas just a little disturbing?

And Chateauneuf du Pape used to be the same way - grab a bottle for the party, because the wines were almost always reliably decent and modestly priced. No more!

In the mid 70s you could buy most Bordeaux reds at under US $10, and even the first growths often could be had in the $20 - 30 range. Even Romanee-Conti often cost well under $100, if you could find it. Many very good Rhones were nearly given away. Now the 2000 first growths are going for several hundred dollars. The 1985 Romanee-Conti sells at auction for several thousand dollars. The best Rhones also can be quite expensive. The Rhone growers should erect a huge statue to honor Robert Parker for making their wines so much more respected and expensive. The cost of the more desired high end wines has increased much more rapidly than inflation since the 70s. Also the spread in prices between a decent classified Bordeaux and a first growth has increased. Also there has been a huge increase in the price of many US and Australian wines of the cult sort, and a decent, but not cult, California Cabernet Sauvignon is now not inexpensive.

The bottom price now probably is in the US$ 2-3 range per 750 ml for 5L box wines. Many of these do not have serious technical flaws as did many cheap wines in the past, but then they seldom have anything exciting either. The upper limit for new releases has moved up to over $US 1000. for some very famous and cult wines in the more desired years.

Rating wines as cheap to expensive depends on your income, and how freely you spend money. To a very rich person who collects old masters, even the cost of Romanee-Conti may not seem very high. For the poor, even a US$ 5 bottle of wine may seem expensive.

cheap: 7 GBP max; moderate: 15 GBP max

there's always stuff on special offer that I like, so the original price points are probably nearer 10 & 20 GBP

Times have changed as someone wisely pointed out. I have only been into wine since 1995, but even then- not so long ago- first growths were about $100 on release, and Romanee Conti was nowhere near where it is now. The 1991 that set me back $400 is now going for close to $2,000. Scary.

I do not drink wine very often, and since I was ITB in college I was able to taste quite a lot and get access to great stuff. So my definitions may be a bit daunting, but keep in mind I maintain a very small cellar. If I drank wine regularly my per bottle pricing expectations would be much lower.

Cheap- under $40 Moderate- $40-100 Expensive- $100+

That would be based on my primary areas of interest- Alsace, Germany, Burgundy and Bordeaux.

Tom.

I've always thought that this was a silly question. There aren't any absolute values, cheap for Bill Gates means something different than cheap for the guy who lives out behind the dumpster.

If "cheap" means anything, it's something like "of a higher quality than other wines in that price range" and expensive means "of a lower quality than other wines in that price range." The price range itself can be anything from $3 to $300.

Regards,

Kent Feiler

In my salad days I never overspent on wine. I lived in California in the

60's 70's 80's and visited all of the California wineries when tasting was free. I never cared for California wines and still don't. It's the barrel taste - yuk!

But today my favorite wine is a Ruffino chianti -- not Reserva because I've not been able to justify in my "retired on a budget" mind $18 for a bottle of wine.

I sometimes see the regular Ruffino in large bottles for $12 and small bottles for $7.50. I usually buy the large bottles when I see them, but it is not often I see them; I have to go CT to find them. Then I stock up.

Now I can only find for $18 small bottle Ruffino reserva at Costco. Maybe I'll try it for Christmas eve.

There is an awful lot of California wine being made these days and most of it is much better than it was 20 years ago. You might be surprised that there are winemakers making wines with little or no oak at all. The winemaking industry in California is far too large to generalize in this way.

Dimitri

Now and then I do try a California wine; however it is still not to my taste. I know one should not generalize about anything, but one can be discriminating using what knowledge they have and express opinions about their own "wisdom." Thanks for responding. Dee