I’ve visited wineries and tasting rooms all over the Hudson Valley and the Finger Lakes region…compared to Pacific coast state wines, they are…goat piss. I’ve bought a bottle here and there to be polite after sampling several wines (“Okay, this is the least bad one we’ve tried”), and I usually end up putting them into my cooking.
The Nobs say to take a rich Burgundy style with beef, but with grilled steak I prefer a good Medoc or St-Emilion. If I feel spendy, a St-Estephe or St-Julien. I like me clarets.
I honestly wouldn’t know and I doubt I personally could the difference between a $100 wine and a $50 wine. The $50 (or more–maybe $75 sometimes) wine I splurge on is a 6 Puttonyos Oremus or Disznokõ Tokaji Aszú wine, and that’s a dessert wine. That particular wine I can tell the difference between, say, a $60 and a $30 bottle. But that’s pretty easy to do, as the more expensive ones are generally sweeter and have more of the botrytized grapes in them. For regular wine, couldn’t really tell you once I get above about $25 a bottle. I drink a lot of wine, but I’m not discriminating, which is good for the wallet, at least.
I’m with pulykamell on the Yellowtail or Barefoot or maybe another brand in the same price range. Occasionally, I will go a bit higher, but never more than $20. My bottom cutoff is (unless it’s a sale price), nothing cheaper than Arbor Mist.
The fact that you start with the question “how much” shows how you simply cannot separate out the taste of the wine from price (once it is known).
Wine tasting is pretty much discredited. Experts have a poor record in distinguishing the expensive from the cheap though of course it is trivially easy to tell a Shiraz from a Tempranillo.
So that’s where I start from now. Having been equally delighted and disappointed across all price points I no longer care about higher priced wine. If it is served and someone else is paying then fine, I’ll drink it and some will be good and some pretty ordinary. What really matters is the variety and the region, cost is irrelevant.
I’ve just come back from Austria where wine is very cheap and we play the game of trying to get the best bottles for the cheapest price. Our winners this year (which we stocked up on and brought back in the car) Is a Chilean Sauvignon blanc (£2 a bottle) a Primitivo (£2.50) A prosecco (£2.50) and Pinot Grigio and Italian un-oaked Chardonnay (both £2).
They stand up easily to bottles I’ve had costing ten times as much so absent some form of snobbery I can’t see the need to pay more, they taste good, they aren’t earth-shattering but paying far more doesn’t guarantee that either.
One thing Australia isn’t short of is wine that is both cheap and perfectly drinkable. 
Typically 4-6 euro per bottle to get a decent quality wine.
A very good easy-drinking pinotage (my preferred red) would be around $4 in the bottlestore. I’d gladly pay — ooh, say $16 for something really nice in a restaurant. On occasion, I might stretch that to somewhere around $20-$25. But I can have a really nice time with a $2 bottle.
This is not because I’m tightfisted, it’s because nice wine is ridiculously cheap here, especially in US$.
[repeat]
Two Buck Chuck at Trader Joes. Even though it’s more like four bucks these days. Seriously, we are not connoisseurs.
I don’t always drink wine, but when I do, I prefer there be baby ducks on the label.
I’m the most disinteresting man in the world.
$15-$20 for daily drinkers, usually purchased at a discount because I buy 6-12 bottles at a time, or get it through an online discounter (WTSO.com gets WAY too much of my money.)
I also keep a few bottles around in the $30-$50 range, for special occasions or “hell, we got these nice steaks, it’s a beautiful day out on the deck, might as well break open the good stuff” types of situations.
For Champagne, up all prices by $10.
We have wine with dinner most nights, so box wines (which have really come a long way) are our choice mostly for convenience sake. If we open a bottle, we finish it, so using box wine decreases the amount we consume.
Expensive wines are scary. A wine connoisseur friend gifted us a bottle last year. Researching it online, it sells for $375 - $450. We haven’t had an occasion special enough to justify opening it yet, but I really want to be able to tell him how great it was next time we get together.
What are you talking about? You get out of Brooklyn much?
This is probably also a good place to brag that I can buy the literal best brandy in the world for $16.50 a bottle and last year’s best is still $13 a bottle. Something that wipes the floor with Hennesy and Courvoisier…
My contention is that the typical U.S. citizen is less likely to drink wine on a regular basis than a typical citizen of one of the other big wine-producing countries, such as France, Italy, Spain. If you want to challenge that assertion, rotsa ruck.
We get everyday wines at Grocery Outlet. Hogue Cellars Cabernet for $5. A reasonable wine that’s cheaper than beer.
Being a musician in Napa Valley, I often get bottles of good stuff from gigs. I also play in a band led by a guy who owns a winery. A good one. Payment is often partially in wine. I save that stuff for holidays, gifts or good steak.
When I was working in tasting rooms, we would usually be able to bring opened partial bottles home. If you had a couple partials and they were compatible, we’d make a “back room blend” to top it up and have it with dinner. Some were successful, some weren’t.
It’s probably a fair assumption. I’d guess that Catholics and Jews are pretty chill when it comes to dinner wine (since it’s a casual part of their various religious rituals) but the majority-Protestant U.S. is more likely to have large social strata that resist the idea. Heck, which groups are more likely to be arguing that when the bible says “wine”, it really means “grape juice” ? I’d be thinking Evangelical/Pentecostal/Baptist with a side order of Methodist.
Asking me that would be like asking a presidential candidate how much for a gallon of milk.
In most states, if not all, that would be a serious violation of the open-container provision of the motor vehcle code, tantamount to drunk driving. In some states, it is illegal for a beer-can collector to carry home a 50-year old collectors item in his car.
Pretty sure it’s okay if it’s in the trunk. As far as I can tell, it only applies to areas accessible to passengers inside the car. At least that’s what I’ve been told and the rule I’ve always followed (and, after a quick perusal of the internet, that seems to be the case, but check your state law.)