Value? What is Value?

Prices for most goods are consistent with quality, but there are exceptions, and wine is a major one. Of course quality varies depending on who's drinking it and then there's the price paid for prestige. There's also prestige based upon the price paid.

Being a former engineering student I decided to devise a formula with the variables of price and score on the 100 point system to come up with a good indicator of the value of the wine. There are a few hurdles in this, for a 100 point $40 wine shouldn't be equal value to a 25 point $10 wine, obviously, so simple division is clearly out. After some playing around I've come up with the formula:

Value = Sqrt(((Rating-70)^2)/Sqrt(price))

One can see from this that any wine with a rating of 70 (any wine below 70 must have 70 substituted for the actual score) has no value, and these wines in general are not worth passing through lips unless the goal is to become drunk on little money. After 10 ratings in my database thus far the high is 11.35 (Poet's Leap), and the low is, well, 0. Looking over the ratings it seems any wine with a value over 10 is a screaming go out and buy right now, and a value of 8 to 10 is a calm go out and buy. 6 to 8 is decent and below 6 is probably not worth buying. Second so far is the Mariflor Pinot Noir at 9.67.

So there it is, now to work on rating more wines...