• From Todd Williams, co-owner of Toad Hollow Vineyards, best-known for its $9 Eye of the Toad pinot noir rose (and who also makes a nifty $12 un-oaked chardonnay). “Most restaurant wine prices are unfair, and they must think their customers are idiots,” says Williams, who doesn’t understand why restaurants don’t try to sell more wine by lowering prices, instead of insisting on 300 or 400 percent markups.

• From Mark Bittman, the cookbook author of the eminently well-done “How to Cook Everything,” among many others: “I gave up writing about wine because it was rich people writing about wine for rich people. They didn’t care what was good as much as they cared about being part of the elite.”

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• Chateau Ducla Entre-Deux-Mers 2002 ($8). This is real Bordeaux at an amazing price. Entre-Deux-Mers is in the southeastern part of the region, far away from the grand estates, and as such isn’t regarded very highly. But this white blend (mostly sauvignon blanc and semillon) is the kind of wine you stumble on and go, “Wow.” It’s not as crisp or as light as pricier wines, but it has decent fruit and that certain French style.

• Avalon Cabernet Sauvignon 2003 ($10). Some of the best cabernet in the world comes from California’s Napa Valley and can cost hundreds of dollars. The grapes from this wine come from the Napa Valley, and it doesn’t cost hundreds of dollars. It’s rich, very cabernet-like and amazingly well-made.

• Worth reading: Wine critic Elin McCoy’s “The Emperor of Wine: The Rise of Robert M. Parker Jr. and the Reign of American Taste.” The book is the first full-scale biography of the man who changed wine writing and wine criticism, from his introduction of the 100-point rating system to his use of language. No one had ever called a wine “inky” before Parker.