This is a good video, the person that made it did a pretty solid blind taste, with a good base of the average wine consumer.

It's interesting though, when you talk to a lot of people that are average consumers about food, instead of wine. I think that the general US population is moving towards smaller production, organic, and local food. They want to know that the food was grown and managed properly, and that usually goes with smaller farms and production facilities. I think the same goes for the ever-growing craft beer industry.

When it comes to wine though, people are ok with drinking a wine, where literally several 100K or even a million+ cases are made of each wine. It's interesting also, that many of the top California wineries that sell these less expensive wine have been known to use massive amounts of pesticides and herbicides in the vineyards. They also use more SO2 in the winemaking process as most wineries. These are the things that most people want less of in their foods.

You also might find it interesting to know that Several of these same wineries have lawsuits filed against them, because of dangeriously high levels of arsenic in these cheap wines.

I promise you, theses large wineries are no different than other large corporations that only look at the bottom line. As you probably already know, most of them are owned by larger corporate entities.

There is something to be said about spending a few extra bucks to get something of true quality. I think the catch word in food nowadays is "artisan". LOL!