Tran - are you talking about the 2006 Granite Ridge Cabernet-Merlot “The Ridge”?
To add my 2 cents - you don’t need to feel awkward about asking any question if you do it honestly. Some people like to post troll questions or observations and many people have answered the same question you’re asking over and over, but how does one learn except by asking and by experience? Yeah, after a very short while you learn that there’s little correlation between price and quality after a certain point, but you do have to learn that - we’re not born knowing things.
As far as the level of sophistication around - take all that with a grain of salt too. There are people here who know a hell of a lot. But maybe not everyone who puts himself or herself into that category.
In any case, if you taste a lot, after a while you get to where you can tell a few things about a wine in a few seconds. A sip and spit and you can make a guess as to what the price should be and whether you’re interested in carrying it. Some people want to score those wines and post tasting notes but if you’re tasting 60 or more in an afternoon with a minute or less for each, that just seems stupid. However, it doesn’t mean you can’t pick up information. And some major info you can pick up is whether you like the wine and whether it’s worth revisiting and what you think it should be priced at.
For ex, the other day I tried a wine and figured it should sell for about $20. They didn’t have an importer so I asked for their price. It’s 24 euros at the winery, so it’s going to retail for somewhere around $100. No way. But maybe somebody picks it up, gets someone at LCBO to take it, and you buy it. The only thing that the price tells you is that somebody thought they could sell it at that price.
Don’t forget, pricing isn’t hard science. If you’re willing to pay $30, why would I sell it to you for $10? And if you’ll pay more because I got a celeb to put his name on the wine, why not ask for a little more? Sometimes the wine is actually worth a bit more. The only way to know is by tasting. And as you found, reflexively dismissing something because it’s a celebrity vanity project isn’t always the right move either. The presence of a celeb name doesn’t necessarily mean the wine is crap.