[jyl]

I think the best price-taste ratio is around $25, for Oregon wines anyway.

I used to bartend at the kids' school's wine auction, and naturally I tasted everything, from $10/bottle to $85/bottle - there were all local wines - there were $85/bottle wines that were genuinely sublime, even with a dulled palate - but you know what your palate is worth, and mine is worth $25 to $35/bottle.

Though I will happily drink a $10/bottle. At $5 - hmm, you are getting into cooking wine. Wine is an analytical business, the vintner who chose the grapes to sell at rock bottom prices and the winemaker who blended those cheap grapes into mass market wine, they knew what they were trying to produce and they weren't trying to make a good wine. Maybe they made a mistake.