Why is Gaja's wine so expensive??

[Botafogo]

Grapestuff, you need to redirect your rant. Against puritanism, Prohibition and, most especially, beancounters. In most wine drinking countries institutions exist to supply you with affordable, aged, ready to drink wines:

First and foremost, the tradition of laying down wines for the next generation and drinking those lain down for you (at much lower costs than current replacement) is a very real type of social security practiced in many (and not just rich) families.

Secondly, in many European countries, if you are, say, a teacher at a college or an architect working in a large firm or even a professional soldier, there is a well stocked and perhaps even subsidised cellar from which you can draw at reasonable prices maintained by the human resources dept. Here it would be a scandal to have a community college provide alcohol to its faculty wheras in many places it would be a scandal if they did not.

Thirdly, in the not too distant past, restaurants would actually cellar wines and serve them when they were ready and at somewhat reasonable pricing. When I was at Antoine's in NO in the 80's, I was selling wines bought twenty years earlier and buying things that are being served now...

Roberto