Lately, I've become pretty interested in wine -- both the consumption and production. I didn't really even like wine too much until about three years ago, about 30,000+ feet in the air over the Atlantic Ocean, when I was in a very nervous, fidgety mood, and thus required a sublime sedative. Crappy airline wine to the rescue!

Since then, my suspicions have been confirmed that the wine connaisseur's world is an odd little enclave, quite often rife with infighting and controversy. Needless to say, due to my indiscriminate interests in insobriety and punch-drunk belligerence, I've been hooked on the subject ever since.

Nevertheless, I say all this to preface an article that has very little to do with besotted controversy. No, it just caught my my oenophile-eye, glazed as it might be, and merged with my more curious, analytical side -- the side that asks, 'Why does wine cost what it does?'.