Is the price right?

£6.99 is enough to buy a bottle of decent plonk. Anything more expensive is about personal taste, and anything less is probably dodgy (unless you know what you're doing). This is according to the findings of a group of leading wine connoisseurs from around the world anyway.

But are most people willing to pay that much given the credit squeeze? A quick poll of my friends (and we're all late twenty/ early thirty something professionals - the market that a lot of brands are particularly willing to target) suggests that actually no, we're not. In fact £4.99 to £5.99 was the average price we're willing to pay, unless one of us is laying on a particularly nice dinner (which, given said credit squeeze, not many of us are doing right now!).

Research out there suggests that consumers generally aren't cutting back on wine despite the economic doom and gloom. I don't dispute that, but with the average price of a bottle only just hovering around the £4 mark, can people really be persuaded to fork out those extra few pounds for a half-decent bottle at a time when a lot of them are worrying about paying the rent and heating their homes? I'm sceptical, but I'm also willing to be proved wrong...

• Harpers Says...