Anyone can pay a lot for a good wine; all it takes is plenty of cash. The real pleasure of wine hunting and drinking is finding something of quality for something less than a king's ransom.
An auction in Hong Kong earlier this month presented one extreme: the world's most expensive wine lot ever - 114 bottles of Burgundy, spread over vintages from 1992 to 2010, sold for $2.04m or $18,200 a bottle or $2200 a glass.
Whatever you think of this and the wisdom of the investment, there is one immutable law when it comes to wine drinking: you don't need to spend a fortune to find a treasure.
New World's Wine Awards - 1165 wines judged by 13 New Zealand and international judges - proved the point recently, with the Top 50 wines retailing for $25 and under.
The chair of the judging panel, Jim Harré, has more exposure to "fancy" wines than most, with his wine judge credentials taking him round the world to various international competitions.
But he says he gets as much pleasure as anyone from finding a quality wine at a bargain price: "Some of the best fun is putting a wine on the table and getting people to taste it blind. Put it in good glassware and try and get your guests to guess the price range.
"It's fascinating. The right glassware can add $10 to most estimates straight off anyway but you'll get people saying it is a $40-$50 wine when it actually costs $16."
Photo / Supplied.
But how do you know you've picked a good wine for $16? It's a question of experimenting and trusting your own taste. As New World's liquor merchandise manager Brendon Lawry says: "That's the whole thing about wine - you can't tell anyone they're wrong. It's all about individual taste."
Harré says he always encourages people to be adventurous and to try new wines and plenty of variety.
"Instead of bringing out one bottle of wine for dinner, bring out three and try different tastes. You don't have to drink them all then and there. They keep! Put them in the fridge or decant them - they'll still be drinking fine three days later."
Try different varietals, he says, and try to buy wines in the $16-$22 range to see if you can turn up something that surprises friends, relatives and dinner guests.
Lawry says the quality of judges, including the renowned Harré and Sam Harrop - regarded as one of the top 10 most influential people in the world of wine - gives the New World Wine Awards credibility. Many customers followed the awards and bought wines aligned to the results - a good way to enter the value for money stakes.
"Jim's right - be adventurous," says Lawry. "I liked the champion white from the New World Wine Awards; The Kings Bastard chardonnay is a fantastic wine; everything is fruit driven but there's just enough oak and malolactic fermentation to give it the right weight for me.
People can follow regions when trying wines - Central Otago, Waipara and Marlborough for pinot noirs, Hakes Bay for merlot-dominant and cabernet-dominant wines, Marlborough, Hawkes Bay and Gisborne for chardonnays and Marlborough again for sauvignon blancs.
"But I also tried things I hadn't before," says Lawry. "One of the gold medal wines was a sauvignon gris. It's a varietal in its own right and it had a really interesting flavour profile."
He also sampled the Moscato - a sparkling wine from a variety of the Muscat grape and which was sweeter than he normally liked but still fruit-driven.
New varietals will become more popular with pinot gris being the fastest growing varietal in stores: "I can't see pinot gris toppling sauvignon blanc in popularity but they will certainly rival each other.
"Who knows? Ten years ago no one would have predicted pinot noir would be as big as it is now."