re: On average, how much do you spend on a bottle of wine?

If I did a blind tasting with you between a selection of 10 and 100 dollar wines I could set it up to ensure you preferred the 100 dollar wine every time, and it would be pretty easy to do. Far easier than getting you to pick the 10 dollar wine.

But the reality is it depends on the wine. If you take someone off the street with no interest in wine and give them a 10 dollar fruit bomb against a 100 dollar young Bordeaux with harsh tannins, they may well pick the 10 dollar wine because they have no palate/understanding for the latter or what it is supposed to be.

I don't trash peoples' subjective preferences, but I do think it's not apples to apples. An average person in the US might take a mediocre-prepared USDA select filet over great redfish because they're way more familiar with the former and have no context/appreciation for the latter, but it doesn't mean the quality difference is negligible.