Why? It’s elementary, my dear: we’re not all Bill Gates and Jay-Z. Supply and demand. Flood the market with more than 20,000 cases of Latour or Lafite or Le Pin and what do you get? Latour and Lafite and Le Pin at bargain prices.

Here’s my quickie shopping list for all of you “nothing less than 96 point” status shoppers who couldn’t really give a fig about the wine’s actual quality or drinkability.  (Let alone its aging potential – hint: hope you’re very young and in good health.)

CURRENT VINTAGE, MUST-HAVE “STATUS SYMBOL” WINES:

All vintage 2000 unless otherwise noted (because of availability or declared vintage), prices approximate retail national average for one 750ml bottle.

Caymus Special Select—$ 150
Dalla Valle—$ 200
Dom Perignon, 1996—$ 100                                     
Joseph Phelps Insignia—$ 125
Lafite-Rothschild—$ 800
Latour—$ 700
Le Pin—$ 3,000
Louis Roederer Crystal, 1996—$ 200
Opus One—$ 170
Ornellaia—$ 145
Petrus (Merlot)—$ 3,400
Romanee-Conti, 1997—$ 4,200
Sassicaia—$ 150
Screaming Eagle, 1997—$ 2,400
Silver Oak Napa—$ 100           
Stag’s Leap Cask 23—$ 100

(BARGAIN SHOPPERS: Price for a case of each, including a 10% case discount, of course: $172,152)

I’m not knocking any of these wines. I certainly wouldn’t turn them down! But I’m sure you’ve noticed the chasm of price disparity between some of the bottles. Granted, the Champagnes (Dom and Roederer) have fairly high case productions; you’d expect their pricing to be in the low hundred range. However when you scan the low-production Napa “cult” cabernets you get anything from $100 to $2,400, and the same kind of gap for the Bordeaux heavy hitters.

What does this mean? Is a bottle of Screaming Eagle really 24 times better than Cask and 16 times better than Special Select? Or is it that much rarer, driving up the price? I think you can do the math: Screaming Eagle makes between 250 and 700 cases a year, depending on the source you’re speaking to. There were 3236 cases of Cask 23 made in 2000 and (although this is apparently a closely guarded secret) Caymus makes something on the order of 4000 cases of Special Select. That would account for, on average, about an eight-and-a-half time price disparity based on scarcity.

Is a $100 bottle ten times better than a $10 bottle? Possibly. Is a $1000 bottle ten times better than a $100 bottle? Not likely. Just look at the numerical ratings. (Which, of course, should be abolished due to their misleading nature— making you the consumer think that wine tasting is so exact and scientific it can be consistently quantified according to a 100 point scale): Caymus Special Select 2000 ($100) got a 92 from Parker, Screaming Eagle 1999, which sells for a mere $1,380, got a 96.

Time for more math: Caymus SS is a bargain at $1.09 per Parker Point, whereas Eagle is a total ripoff at a ridiculous $14.38 per point. It’s a piddling four percentage points better, only eight-and-a-half times as rare, but commands more than 13 times the price. Puh-LEEZE.

So… now that I’ve dissed the unimportant less-than-one-percent of bottles that all of the wine geeks are constantly nattering on about, what, indeed, are the important ones? Here’s my top five list (you might want to sit down):

1. Charles Shaw (also known as Two Buck Chuck)
2. Kendall Jackson Chardonnay
3. Gallo Hearty Burgundy
4. Blue Nun
5. Sutter Home White Zinfandel

Why these wines? Isn’t it obvious? Without these (and a slew of other wines people actually buy by the truckload past and present), I wouldn’t be writing this column, you wouldn’t be reading it, and that 102-point-grape-freak wouldn’t be bragging about his 10,000 bottle humidity-controlled cellar with a vertical of Heitz Martha’s dating back to the Paris Judgment that he’ll never drink.

These are wines that changed the way America drank, that changed the way the world grew grapes and made wine. These are the important wines. Don’t be fooled by arrogant and pompous imposters.