Right. I've never felt bad about serving inexpensive wine to my friends, or drinking it myself. Santa Rita from Chile used to be excellent at 3 bucks a bottle, Rosemount and many Aussies used to be $4. The only reason not to serve it is if it's not very good, so yes, why would any of us drink that?

If you would ever be afraid of serving your friends a wine simply because it's inexpensive, you need better friends.

And yes, you can make any wine taste cheap, and you can often make a wine seem a lot better with presentation. But given that at a recent tasting, I managed to guess which (Pinot Noir) clones the winemaker had used, I think there really is something to the claims that there's a difference (though I was also rather lucky on the guess, too).

A $2 Cab will never be capable of the magic in a great Chateau Latour, but you also won't have to wait 50 years to find out, and you may be able to enjoy it as a perfect wine for the setting (And expensive wines aren't always great, even if every Latour, or Leoville Las Cases I've tried has been amazing -- I've had plenty of bad, expensive wine, or wine that just wasn't worth what it cost).