“Just put a bird on the label, that will help it sell!” So goes the wine industry joke.

Is a $100 bottle of wine really worth $100? A $200 bottle worth $200? Sometimes. Maybe. Your columnist happens to be fairly enterprising about getting value out of wine purchases and has the benefit of having worked for years in the wine industry, in a capacity where he got to take home a $100-$200 bottle of wine about 3x per week. Moreover, with family who work as consultants across many wineries, cult-wines come home and are a mainstay of holiday dinner tables. Have you ever had a flight of Scarecrow wines across the 2014, 2015 and 2016 vintages? A $150 bottle of Sauvignon Blanc? We sure have.

Your columnist has had a lot of really great wine, a lot of mediocre wine, and frankly, a lot of terrible wine. Sometimes the very best wines are crafted by passionate artists who don’t know the first thing about selling and marketing their wines – and many, many gems go completely overlooked on shelves, if they can even get distribution in the first place.

So join us on our journey as we explore the world of wines $25 and under – as we find the good, the garbage and the gems of the wine world. I think you’ll be surprised how much out there punches well above it’s price-point. You don’t need to spend $100 to have a $100 wine experience if you know what to look for and we’re here to guide you along the way.