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Interesting article but price isn't the best guide to wine. You mention the football market, well a promising 17 year old from a second division club (lets say sounthampton) should cost the same as a promising 17 year old from, say, a French club. In real life? A premium is paid for his britishness (insane, I know) and the brit will be worth a few MILLION pounds more than the french kid.

Wine is the same, where is comes from and who makes is makes a big difference to the price. Two equally good wines from the US or from france may be equal in tastyness but the french one will cost more every time as it is French - you pay for the name.

As the roughest of guides price is an okay indicator (£2 is paint stripper, £200 is drunk with only your nearest and dearest) but don't fool yourself that it shows anything about the quality of the wine.

That's all before we go into the price raising that supermarkets go through in order to be able to make offers and do deals to sell large amounts of wine.... but that's another story.

Evan, buy an idiots guide to wine and learn something or let your friends order from now on.

Like you I have a limited knowledge of what is or isn't a good wine and can never remember which wines I have enjoyed in the past. Your method of choosing wine is much the same as mine. I have added a few stipulations that take into account some rudimentary personal tastes & of course budget. My first choice is French & then New world red wines. I never buy Chilean or Spanish wine - don't know why - it may even be down to the labels they use - not as sophisticated as the French or funky/interesting as the New World. I did say I knew next to nothing about wine. I also have a price limit - I rarely pay more than £6 per bottle. What tends to gets my purchase will be a discounted offer i.e. a £7.99 wine (higher than my price ceiling & therefore deemed by me to be a good wine) discounted to below £6. I know I'm a sucker for the stores marketing ploy - but it works every time with me!!!

I buy into the pricing formula too because it's the easiest guide for wine for dummies. But it neglects two crucial points: tax and branding. If tax on a bottle of wine is £3.50 and you buy a bottle for 3.49, then you're paying nothing at all for what's in the bottle. It's either a loss leader for the store, or you may as well drink diluted dirt. Even up to a fiver, you're paying very little for the wine. So all cheap wine is poor wine - and life is too short to drink bad wine.

That's the easy bit. The brand issue confuses us wine illiterates more. When a distributor invests in advertising and PR and, worse, gets good coverage in popular programmes and the press, they can push the price up without any discernable link to the quality of the product.

I recently bought a Chateneauf du Pape on a supermarket deal. It's a £13 bottle, reduced to under a tenner. It's a popular name, known for being a bit pricier than it's quality deserves, but the supermarket discount seemed to make it an attractive deal. The reality is it's no more enjoyable - and is probably less so - than a £6 or £7 bottle. ie. there is no link between price and quality, or between quality and enjoyment.

The secret is to spot a wine you like, make a note of it, then only buy it when there's a deal on.

I buy into the pricing formula too because it's the easiest guide for wine for dummies. But it neglects two crucial points: tax and branding. If tax on a bottle of wine is £3.50 and you buy a bottle for 3.49, then you're paying nothing at all for what's in the bottle. It's either a loss leader for the store, or you may as well drink diluted dirt. Even up to a fiver, you're paying very little for the wine. So all cheap wine is poor wine - and life is too short to drink bad wine.

That's the easy bit. The brand issue confuses us wine illiterates more. When a distributor invests in advertising and PR and, worse, gets good coverage in popular programmes and the press, they can push the price up without any discernable link to the quality of the product.

I recently bought a Chateneauf du Pape on a supermarket deal. It's a £13 bottle, reduced to under a tenner. It's a popular name, known for being a bit pricier than it's quality deserves, but the supermarket discount seemed to make it an attractive deal. The reality is it's no more enjoyable - and is probably less so - than a £6 or £7 bottle. ie. there is no link between price and quality, or between quality and enjoyment.

The secret is to spot a wine you like, make a note of it, then only buy it when there's a deal on.

Hi Evan,

I used to work for Consensus. I was not impressed with the guess work by all those involved. The data is flimsy at best. Even the historical data changes over time thanks to revisions of data etc.

Sometimes we get too bogged down in the detail and don't see the bigger picture. Too much business/economics news these days is flash in the pan and is forgotten after a few weeks, perhaps months.

I can think of much better things to spend £370 on.