> But unless you're seeking out that particular flavor profile
It's not just seeking out a particular flavor profile. If you want to experience something novel for your mouth and you've been drinking only $20 bottles for years, you will never encounter anything new. But if you try $100 bottles, you're much more likely to accidentally discover something new (whether you like it or not is subjective)
Continuously searching for new experiences is an expensive hobby.
If it's produced in the same region, the good stuff is usually less than $20, and most often less than $10. It's not usually worth it to pay for travel, IMO.
You and your parents have all described wine in terms of $. I've tasted a dollar and it tastes like a pound but I would not try to drink it.
Why not describe your experience with the good stuff. We lack decent language to describe taste but we have loads of language for experience and feelings.
Lots of people here are pontificating (me too) about wine but so often the discussion ends up with bottle price and not what is actually important.
I don't see how that follows. There's an enormous amount of different $20 bottles. There's probably enough different ones every year that if you try to you can have a different wine every single time you drink and still spend < $30 (to factor in shipping from further) per bottle - though going so hard on exploration without exploitation of the ones you find you like seems suboptimal anyway.
My experience is that the $20 bottles tend to be made to fit into <50 archetypes. The producers are trying to fit into a specific flavor profile, and are very good at hitting it. There are variations, but usually I would think of those variations as "imperfections," not as "character."
Once you get to $50 and above, they are trying to show you something unique, perhaps an expression or a particular flavor they like or an expression of the local terroir.
Sure, there are thousands of different $20 bottles, but they barely taste unique. It's like cheap coffee. Sure, there might be minute differences between the hundreds of cheap brands but they are barely discernible
That's definitely not true. I occasionally buy 5-6 random 8-20e wine bottles from the local supermarket and they typically vary massively. Even when I order my favourites trying others listed as similar all taste very different to me.
Maybe 50 years ago you couldn't get a cheap good wine without doing it one of five ways but modern logistics allow winemakers to make good wine cheaply with a wide variety of different products and twists.
It's not just seeking out a particular flavor profile. If you want to experience something novel for your mouth and you've been drinking only $20 bottles for years, you will never encounter anything new. But if you try $100 bottles, you're much more likely to accidentally discover something new (whether you like it or not is subjective)
Continuously searching for new experiences is an expensive hobby.