Expensive wines don't just taste better, they're also better value for money - here's why

• Business Insider spoke to Amelia Singer, a wine expert.
• Singer is a TV presenter on The Wine Show, and writes for Waitrose Food Magazine.
• She told us how to get the best deal on supermarket wines.

Read the full transcript below:

Amelia Singer: Hi, my name is Amelia Singer, and I'm a wine expert, TV presenter on the Wine Show, and I run my own wine-tasting and consultancy business, Amelia's Wine. You can still find bargains with wine in supermarkets, however, the best bargains are always gonna be from lesser-known regions and lesser-known grapes.

So instead of maybe going for that Sancerre, which is Sauvignon Blanc grape from Loire valley, go for that Touraine, which is actually two kilometers away from Sancerre, made from Sauvignon Blanc, but no one really knows what it is. Or, go for something like the Malvasia grape, which is awesome, if you really like Pinot Grigio, or you like, kind of aromatic whites, go for Malvasia, from Central Europe and Eastern Europe, because no one really thinks about buying from there, and yet they've got fantastic climate, and it's normally pretty consistent. And it's all a really good value, because no one thinks of it.

In terms of getting value for money, unfortunately, you get what you pay for, which sounds really obvious, but there's a lot of things which go into the price of a wine once it hits the supermarket shelves. So, what you have to think about is, money will have been spent on logistics, packaging, excise duty, and so therefore, a £5.49 bottle of wine, which is roughly the average price, what the average person spends in a supermarket, only 60p of that bottle will be spent on wine.

However, it's amazing how if you go up to £10, already, you're gonna get about £2.76 worth of wine. That's actually money spent on the juice of that wine, besides all the other stuff. And then, if you go up to £20, you'll spend about £7.40, so even though you're going four times in value of the five pounds, you're getting 19's worth increase in terms of quality, which is quite interesting.

So, definitely, that is useful to keep in mind. I'd also say look for wine buyer's choice, a bit like when you go to a bookstore, and you go to Waterstones, and they have their staff recommendations. If you go into somewhere like a Waitrose, or wherever, and they say buyer's choice, that will tend to be, or have to be good quality, because it's the buyer putting their name to it.

And it also is good if you want to try something a bit different, because they're trying to guide people to try either a new region or a new grape. So, therefore, you tend to be getting really good value for money, and you can discover something really exciting. Also, supermarkets' own, you can also find good value for.

There was a time when supermarkets would have multiple, multiple amounts of these, but now, the general trend is to have less of them, but make them really good quality. Because it's a bit like a house wine when you go into a restaurant. They, again, are putting their name to that house wine. So they want it to be of a certain standard, it definitely has to be well made, even if it's not going to completely blow your mind.

Produced by Charlie Floyd.