Eh, I think you just have to be very picky and visit a lot of the Ithaca region wineries, hoping for just the right weather for the growing season when the grapes are pressed. But you are right, good wines are the exception, and even drinkable stuff is a 50/50 proposition. Forget about Long Island and Niagra (unless you are into ice wines…Niagra has some good ice wines).
We target our wine purchases to about $15-25 per bottle. Preferably Italian, French or Spanish. We have some bottles of wine that are $80-150 but I admit that I’m hard pressed to say they are 5 times better than the ones we drink more often. Not even twice better, if I’m honest. I do want to give a call out to Coppola’s Claret. It’s one of the very few domestic wines we enjoy and drink regularly.
I’d say it can also speak to being able to separate the taste from the price. If you know that the average quality doesn’t increase all that much above a certain price, then you might still occasionally try wines above that price, in hopes of finding something interesting randomly, but beyond a certain price that chance for serendipity is not worth it since you’d still be essentially rolling the same dice unless you’ve tried every one of the lower-priced similar wines and really needed something different. Whereas if you did think that higher price always = higher quality, your upper limit would be a lot more flexible since the result would be more reliably better than a lower price tier.
Diseno Malbec is my latest everyday wine. It’s around $10 at Kroger. I also like Apothic Red blend quite a bit. It’s $11.
I also really like Anora Malbec but can’t find it all the time.
As a visiting Brit, I endorse this idea strongly. On my most recent trips, where I ate out at up and downscale restaurants, we were frequently surprised to see how few tables had wine (instead opting for beer, cocktails, or non alcoholic). In Europe, EVERY table would have wine.
I also found wine - both in supermarkets and restaurants - to be very expensive compared to Europe. And the Californian options were often more expensive than the European imports.
To the OP, for mid week wine I would typically spend in the £6-8 region ($10ish). A little more on the weekends. I splurge up to £25 on occasion (c.$30), and rarely find it’s worth it. (Clearly these are supermarket, not restaurant prices).
Well, that’s because they’re better. 
They also have the only three varieties on the planet amirite? Cab, Merlot, and Cab-merlot. (Cab tastes worse than any other wine, that is to say better than almost any other alcohol, and Merlot doesn’t have any character.)
It depends on the type of wine but, my every day wine is ~$10-20 (e.g. Horse hills heaven), my special occasion wine for when we have guests or want something good at home is ~$40-80 (e.g. caymus).
There is a pretty big difference between $15 and $75 in quality IMHO, especially for reds. I know people who don’t consider my every day wine drinkable.
I think the difference between $$75 and $250 is noticable but not enough to justify the price IMHO.
I think the differences start to get more subtle (almost non-existent) once you break $250 IMHO.
I’m not the wine buyer or wine drinker in the family, but the most we have paid for a bottle of wine is 250. It was a charity auction.
It was very good. Even wine-ignorant me could tell it was different than our usual fare.
I have starting building a wine collection (up to just under 100 bottles). I live in British Columbia Canada, so our taxes on wine is ridiculous combined with our weak dollar makes buying wine more than it should be!
I drink anything red, but have been enjoying Shiraz’s lately. I like “19 Crimes”, nice Australian Shiraz that I can get for ~$20 CAN. I’m sure the same bottle below the 49th Parallel is about $12US. I know for a fact I can go to Bellingham Washington to the Costco there and buy bottles of original Apothic for $7.50US and that same bottle at my government run liquor store is just under $17 CAN.
I also live 2 hours from the Okanagan region of BC and have gone on annual wine tours. I but 12-18 bottles per trip, the average price per bottle is $25-$28 CAN.
I have been aging my wine with pretty good results, I try to wait 4 years from the label date. If it was bottled in 2013 it’s good to drink this year. If it says 2014, I leave it in my rack to drink next year.
I have a few expensive bottles (for me), they’re in the $75-$100 CAN range. My problem is I don’t know “when” I should drink these expensive bottles?
Oh well, first world problems I guess…
MtM
From my American perspective, it was frankly (heh) ludicrous. No matter where we were, we’d hit up some tiny epicerie and my friend (thank god for fluent friends) would ask for something cheap and tasty. The shopkeep would invariably show us a selection of wines bottled in a vineyard a couple towns over for around ten Euros, and they were invariably delicious.
The French have a very different idea of what constitutes an acceptable table wine.
You can save a lot by making your own wine. If you start 3 six gallon carboys, you’ll end up with 90 bottles of wine. The last time I did this from kits my cost was around two or three dollars a bottle for very drinkable wine.
Damn you, Californian!
Like I said earlier, interstate tax means I’d have to spend about forty bucks in an NYC wine shop to get a California red that was appreciably more delicious than a $20 Medoc.
If we could get rid of the asshat state blue law that makes it illegal to sell wine anywhere but a licensed wine-and-liquor retail store, we could get the damn prices down around here.
Ironically enough my uncle owns a “U-Brew” and I used to make my own wine with him. I’d get the “family discount” and a single wine kit made about 60 bottles of wine. At the time (about 15 years ago) it would cost me about $2-3 CAN per bottle.
I found that yes it is very drinkable, but you had to let it age 12 months to get rid of that “young/green” taste. But after 18 months your wine was a crap shoot, you had no idea if it had turned or was still good. My uncles “U-Brew” collection was about 500 bottles. He would grab 4 different bottles at a time. He’d open the first bottle and taste, if it was good we’d drink it. If it was bad he’d pour it down the sink. In a night between the two of us it wouldn’t be unusually to open 7 bottles to find 3 good ones.
I cringe whenever I’m at someones house and they bring out their home-brew and say “it’s been 7 weeks so this stuff is ready to drink!”. Yeah no…
Fast forward 15 years later, I make roughly twice as much as I used to, so even though I think wine costs more than it should doesn’t mean I refuse to spend the money! I find this an enjoyable hobby, finding new wineries and wines. Then discussing with friends and coworkers.
MtM
Move to Illinois. You can buy wine at a liquor store. At a winery. At the grocery store. At the convenience store. At Target. At Aldi.
Nope, it’s fine here as long as it’s not accessible. The cork should be pushed all the way in, too.
In Michigan, restaurants can put an official seal over the open bottle. As long as you don’t break the seal, you can bring home the bottle without risk of breaching the open container law.
I’ll typically spend somewhere in the $8-$12 range for weekday wine. Maybe $15 for special occasions or gifts.
I have fond memories of cruises with friends on the Canal du Midi. When stocking up with supplies we’d walk to the nearest vineyard where they’d invariably have a rustic farmers shop dispensing bulk wine via a petrol-pump arrangement into jerrycans or similar. It was a couple of euro a litre and really very good indeed.
To a certain extent, it’s depends on what you want. But if you call the winery, I’m sure someone there will be glad to give you some advice. (Drink it right now, and then buy some more! 
)