Yeah, $5 wine is basically cooking wine. It isn't meant to be consumed as a beverage.
On the other hand, the average person is unlikely to be able to tell the difference between a $25 bottle of wine and a $2500 bottle of wine.
On the other hand, the average person is unlikely to be able to tell the difference between a $25 bottle of wine and a $2500 bottle of wine.
When you cook with wine you lose all the alcohol, which is the only constant between two bottles of wine. You're just left with the rest from which comes the taste.
There's no such thing as "cooking wine". Bad wine is bad wine. If you wouldn't drink it, don't cook with it.
That all being said, I personally think wine snobbery is basically bullshit and I think blind taste tests tend to support that view.
Still, a wine isn't bad because it's $5. Nor is it good because it's $30.
When I lived in the UK I'd often get by with the table wine from Tesco for under 5 pounds and honestly it was fine. I found quite a few decent bottles of Portugese and Chilean wine for under 10 pounds. Beaujolais wasn't more than 3-5 pounds.
This is a myth. Even after 2.5 hours of simmering/baking, 5% remains. Flambeing leaves 75%, and a 15 minute simmer still leaves nearly half.
You say that like its a bad thing.
Cooking with the wine is a great way for it to end up on the table surrounded by random glasses where "I don't want to trouble you", becomes "well, since its open anyway".
But if you are cooking with the wine, you already have the bottle open. Since an opened bottle of wine will rapidly deteriorate if you don't drink it within a fairly short time period (day or so), you may as well drink the remainder, thus put the open bottle on the table (where family/guests are gathered), and it will be consumed with relish.
Stuff like red wine sauces, whiskey glazed veggies, rum cakes, flambeed mushrooms, etc. that aren't cooked as long contain a very significant amount of alcohol.
The last wine I drank was a Montepulciano d'Abruzzo; I can't remember the specific winemaker, but it was quite nice and was less than $9, despite being bought in another European country.