Of course the only thing you’ll get sub $30 in a restaurant, is a no-name bulk wine that cost them $10 tops
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Puff piece from CNBC, wherein some Somm Select guy says that wine $20 and under is trash, and “The sweet spot for a good bottle: $30 to $60.“<
Complete rubbish - unserious, biased, snobistish …
1st: which prices? At the producers? Retailers in Europe? Retailer in the US? At restaurants?
A wine which is 8,- off the domaine, can easily be 35-40 at a fine restaurant
(oh, sorry … they don´t buy and sell this "trash "… I forgot 
)
Seriously: there are so many really good wines for 8 to 20 € … in Austria, Southern France and Rhone Valley … also in Germany …
and certainly elswhere …
usually no really great wines, but very satisfying, good to very good and also typical for what it is or should be … most of the times … and often better than some hyped wines for 5-10 times the money …
to call everything below 30-60 “trash” is BS 
(for US-product s I don´know …)
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Total bullcrap. There are tons of great wines for under $20 - maybe not domestically, but Spain, the south of France, all over Italy there are still remarkable bargains produced by small family estates.
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I think we can assume USA.
I have the luxury of mostly drinking higher grades of wines, but there are a ton of good wines under $20. Just off the top of my head:
- many New Zealand sauv blancs, including large production ones
- many roses from around the world
- better examples of Cotes du Rhone
- value Bordeaux
- Cramant de Bourgougne
- muscadet
- value Spanish reds
- California zinfandel
- Chianti and Barbera
- Cru Beaujolais
- German riesling
- South African value wines
- Chilean and Argentine value wines
- Many Italian, Portuguese, Greek and Spanish whites
Sure, there are even far more that suck, but it’s not a rare or fluky thing to find good wine under $20.
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We are not the target audience for the article.
And “very good chance” that it’s mass-produced stuff does not mean all of it is.
Classic Berserker misrepresentation and faux outrage.
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The general point is pretty valid. There certainly are good wines that are sub-$20, but one really needs to seek them out. $30-60 there is just an ocean of interesting, beautifully made wine.
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And a good deal of crap
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Meh…I’ve done better. 
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Over-simplification - surprised he didn’t ‘clean’ or ‘non-industrial’ in his arguments…
Cheers
For the average consumer who buys their wine at a grocery store, that is most likely true. For us who shop at wine stores, it is not hard to find lots of very good wines for $20 or less.
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This is a good thread
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Like the article, this thread is a waste of time for us.
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I am going to be a little bit of a contrarian here. I do not deny that one can find a value under $20. But I do agree it is getting extremely rare to find a “good” wine under $20. Of course, we all have a couple we can name that are quaffable but are they really good??? . I think it is a real problem, and IN GENERAL…I would agree the benchmark has moved.
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How about $20.01 to $29.99?
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Somm Select has many in that category!
Check out the Costco thread for lots of recommendations from wine enthusiasts. And that is Costco. Think of wine shops were enthusiasts like us taste all the wines that wii be in their stores. Yeah, I don’t need a sommelier.
Checkout Negoceants like Wineaccess, De Negoce, and WTSO.
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salesmen gonna sell.
I guess it would make sense. You can hardly buy fast food lunch for two at a chain restaurant for $30 these days. All the benchmarks have been moving.
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