Interesting article, and a reflection on human nature when it instantly sold out
But perhaps this wine is an exception. Does the fact it's a budget wine but has won high acclaim reveal, in a QED sense, that quality at that price is so unexpected as to be worthy of headlines when found? You can be sure the price will be rising steeply in future IMO.
In most countries I lived there is a discernible pattern of pricing vs quality. In the UK with high fixed-costs, esp. production, bottling, freight, duty and profit margin, the baseline cost of a bottle of 'table wine' used to be about £5 - that's when I last lived in England. The 'value' of the wine in that might be something like £1. At about £8, many fixed costs would be the same as the cheaper wine, so the wine
should be say over twice as good than a baseline palatable. Go up the scale and the quality vs cost supposedly rises exponentially; spend £15-20 and the quality is incomparable.
This has also been my experience in other countries. In Germany fixed costs are much lower. Even wine at Euro5 as bottle is palatable, like a pretty good table-wine. Spend 10 and you're without question in completely another league re: quality. Euro20 and it's going to be something I'd consider superb.
Go back the other way, buy wine in Singapore. Massive fixed costs and taxes. Anything under about S$25 [say £12] is going to be like a £4 wine in the UK. And that's the baseline.
[These are all retail, in a restaurant you'd be looking at perhaps triple the costs, 'of course'].