Let me just spit this out. A lot of wines are still awful. Plenty more barely rise above the low-water mark. In spite of all the talk about improved standards, a huge number of wineries are churning out wine that tastes like cinnamon-flavoured mouthwash. And yet these travesties are often bestsellers, eased off the shelves by the beefy marketing muscle that supports major brands.
It doesn't have to be that way. Even in the low-price, high-volume end of the market, there is good stuff to be found alongside the bad and the very, very ugly. As somebody who spends far more time wading through mixed batches of £6.99s than reverently sampling £16.99s, I reckon we're lucky the Irish market sees such an abundance of drinkable plonk.
The trouble is that it's all mixed up with affordable plonk that threatens to strip the sensual pleasure out of drinking. The total picture is vast and confusing. Looking for a bottle to cheer up Tuesday's pasta, how can you decide between Santa Rita and Santa Rosa? Weigh up White Cloud and White Ochre? Steer a safe course between Two Oceans and A Bend in the River? Not easy. Maybe it's no wonder a lot of shoppers reach for the comfort of a familiar name, no matter what it tastes like. But the truth is that, irrespective of how much dosh they pump into advertising, some big brands are streets ahead of others in terms of quality. Hit on the better efforts, and you'll probably end up pouring the nasties down the sink if they cross your path again. Life is too short to drink bad wine.
Now we get to the sticky bit. What's bad? There are few absolutes: only individual tastes. So if you really enjoy a particular wine, don't let anybody (me included) bamboozle you into abandoning it. It's not just wine writers with their earnest tasting notes who try to steer people away from one set of bottles and towards another. A thick cloud of snobbery floats around the lower end of the market. Beware all the sophisticates who sneer at Jacob's Creek and guzzle wines with fancier pedigrees that taste far worse.
You have to be true to your own set of tastebuds. I try to be true to mine. Although I hope I've learnt a bit over the years about how to judge wines from a technical point of view, there's a large dollop of subjectivity in my verdicts, so they certainly shouldn't be taken as gospel.
Speaking purely personally, then, I'd be happy never to have to sample another drop of most of California's big brands. Blossom Hill, Glen Ellen, Estate Cellars, Garnet Point, Vendange, Sutter Home, Ernest & Julio Gallo, Turning Leaf from Gallo . . . I've had 'em all and I'm sorry, but I find them over-sweet and soulless, no matter what the colour or the grape.
California may be the worst offender (their excuse is that they have to make wines to suit Coca Cola-trained palates), but it's not the only one. I don't think Piat d'Or, B&G or Mommesin do a whole lot for the reputation of French wine. Mateus Rose is a touch less sickly than before, but still a leaky flagship for Portugal.
The aforementioned Bend in the River is unlikely, I think, to restore the shoddy reputation of everyday German wine. Arniston Bay doesn't taste to me like anything South Africa should be proud of. I could go on. But the central point is that wines like these are sold in just about every retail outlet in the country, to customers who could do a lot better. We're not talking here about the bottom of the barrel, where the likes of Blue Nun, Black Tower, Paul Masson and Pedrotti reside.
The giant Gallo deserves some credit for developing wines of respectable quality higher up the price scale, in recent years, to raise their game. Many other big companies have conducted operations the other way round, using a prestigious name to flog banal mass-market wines which sell on label and looks rather than taste.
With trepidation (mighty corporations can be vengeful) I'd put Robert Mondavi's Woodbridge wines into this pigeonhole, along with the southern French varietals of Baron Philippe de Rothschild - not because they're awful, but because they aren't as good as they should be, given their noble parentage. While we're at it, the basic reds of the mammoth Australian B R L Hardy don't seem to fit anywhere near the same portfolio as finely-wrought Eileen Hardy and E & E Black Pepper Shiraz. With money to burn, it's relatively easy to make limited quantities of swanky wine. The more straightforward stuff is a test of a commitment to quality.
Mostly, the good guys tend to get it right, all the way up from £5.99 or £6.99 to the very top of their range, where they'll usually have a few stunners costing much, much more. Their everyday wines aren't necessarily sensational, but you can expect them to be well-made and appetising. There are hundreds of these reliables - in Australia and Chile especially, but sprinkled around other countries, too.
My Top 20 below is but a fraction of the total - a fistful of favourite medium-tolarge producers, all of whose wines are widely available. Their names are worth logging in the back of your mind for times when you're staring at a supermarket shelf or a restaurant list, feeling stumped.