I agree with all of this, and would only add that it seems like the market has already handled this strange circumstance.
I enjoy great wine and it seldom costs more than $8 a bottle. Some people really want to buy expensive things for the sake of luxury alone, and since wine is so easy to make (and apparently to project your tastes onto) we have amazing choices at nearly all price points.
I'm not just being blue collar, either --- I'll readily admit that very expensive whiskey tastes VERY different from cheap whiskey, and much better too. There's no such thing as a $8 bottle of whiskey that tastes just as good as $90 bottle, but that's exactly how wine works. And, I suspect it's exactly why there's such price variation too. (I mean variation in the sense that a cheap bottle is as high quality as an expensive bottle. For whiskey, a cheap bottle is low quality, and an expensive bottle can be high quality.)
I enjoy great wine and it seldom costs more than $8 a bottle. Some people really want to buy expensive things for the sake of luxury alone, and since wine is so easy to make (and apparently to project your tastes onto) we have amazing choices at nearly all price points.
I'm not just being blue collar, either --- I'll readily admit that very expensive whiskey tastes VERY different from cheap whiskey, and much better too. There's no such thing as a $8 bottle of whiskey that tastes just as good as $90 bottle, but that's exactly how wine works. And, I suspect it's exactly why there's such price variation too. (I mean variation in the sense that a cheap bottle is as high quality as an expensive bottle. For whiskey, a cheap bottle is low quality, and an expensive bottle can be high quality.)