Must wine be expensive to be good?

In my opinion, there is some relationship, but it's far from exact. As a general rule, wine pricing is a classic free-market situation, in which the finest wines are in great demand but relatively limited supply, and thus can command higher prices than the lesser stuff.

The key variable, in my opinion, is the quality of the grapes from which the wines are made. Over time, certain geographical areas have been found to produce the most excellent grapes, which in turn produce the finest wines. Bordeaux, for example, is generally known for good red wines; the Medoc region within Bordeaux generally enjoys its best reputation; the Pauillac and Margaux communes within the Medoc are thought of as being even better; and specific chateaux (wineries) like Ch. Margaux and Ch. Mouton-Rothschild are the best-reputed, and most expensive, of all. Same goes for California to Northern California to Napa Valley to Rutherford to Martha's Vineyard.

Grapes grown outside these areas make good wine -- and, occasionally, great wine -- but these are the exceptions; further, as outstanding wines from unexpected places become known, the demand for them rises, and the price goes up.

Other influential factors include the skill of the vine grower and the wine maker; wines that have developed a long-term reputation for excellence are in higher demand, and again the price goes up.

The boom in U.S. demand for wine in the past couple of decades has also caused wine prices in general to increase faster than inflation. And, on the other side of the curve, that demand has prompted some mass-market wineries to "overcrop," which means to force the vines to grow far more tons of grapes on an acre of vineyard land than they really should. For sound agricultural reasons, overcropping results in bland, flavorless fruit. You get more grapes, which means more bottles of wine, so it can be sold cheap, but it's not GOOD wine. The finest vineyards, on the other hand, scrupulously prune back the vines, maintain appropriate spacing, and don't try to squeeze more juice out of the vineyard than nature intended. The result is excellent fruit, excellent wine, and limited quantities. Supply-and-demand comes into play again, and the price goes up.

This is a fairly simple sketch, but I think you get the idea!

The good news, for wine lovers like us, is that the relationship isn't exact. Many wines stand out for good "quality-price ratio," for a variety of reasons. Some older family-owned wineries are able to grow their own grapes and thus don't need to pay a farmer for them; this reduces their costs, and they may pass that saving on to the consumer. Further, some excellent wine regions simply haven't been "discovered," so in the absence of high demand, the prices stay low. The wines of Chile and Argentina, and those of the Languedoc-Roussilon region in Southern France fall into this category; ditto for South Africa and many of the wines of Australia; to some extent, the same is true of Alsace and the Loire in France, although prices are rising.