Ten years ago I spoke to a winemaker whose goal was to match the test of a certain top level price winning wine. She said that they did chemical analysis and never ending taste tests. She said that she was not the only one. They thought that low price wines should eventually taste just as good as any of the super expensive ones. Even then it was hard to tell the difference. She pointed out that the different types of wines would eventually taste very similar to the point that most people would not be able to tell the difference. The price she was aiming for was less than $20 per bottle.

I suspect that very bad wine is very evident but good wines are very hard to identify by taste since they are very similar in taste. The only difference is the bottle and the price.

Wine is like any other consumer product. People pay for the brand and the utility. But brand is the big price differentiator.