A bottle a day keeps the doctor away.

In an ideal world it would do. As then I could preface my name with Doctor, as I'd be a purveyor of goods that improved the health of anyone who walked through the door.

I suppose I should give some explanation of what and why of the title:
Plonk, as everyone knows, is cheap/inferior wine that you don't drink out of pleasure but rather to either get drunk on something that's less bloating than beer or to look sophisticated (and most likely fail in doing so.) For my sins, the first bottle of plonk I bought wasn't one, but three, with the then amazing Tesco's 3-for-£10 deal (ahh the heady days of underage economy drinking); and it clearly had one of the two above desired effects, as I have no recollection at all as to what on earth it was. Thankfully it was quite the eye-opener and although, naturally, I'd had wine at home, I never bought wine till I went to university, where I remembered the pitfalls and horrors of cheap wine.

From that to Petrus is quite a step (as mentioned before, one I actually have yet to take). Château Pétrus is considered one of the top wines in the entire world; Farr Vintners puts the latest drinkable vintage, '98, at £1708 per bottle; quite the payout for a simple pleasure. However, as many of the wine-world's top critics name-drop it in their works, like some famous celebrity friend, and the alliteration with Plonk, I thought it suitably apt.

Returning to Plonk, there are a few things I feel I should mention given that a blog about wine at the very least should be informative. Firstly, assuming that you are wanting to drink more than just gut-rot there are some very good reasons why buying a £5 bottle of wine will be outstandingly better, both in taste and quality, than buying a £3 bottle.
Sad to say, like many things in life, the reason for this is tax: the Duty currently on a bottle of wine is around the 160p mark. In a £3 bottle of wine over half of the cost is pure government greed (a point I'll address in a later missive). Now factor in transport/labour/administration/retail-mark ups and you've got very little left in the bottle, in monetary terms, that actually involves the wine. Say that Duty is 160p, transport from wherever 40p, administration and labour costs another 30p, leaving you a mere 70p to include retail profit, wine-making cost and wine-maker's profit. All in all I imagine that the actual cost of the wine in terms of production might be around the 5p mark.
Now consider if you move up a price-point from £3 to £5, suddenly you've got a massive 270p's worth of potential wine-value. Certainly a better bottle, in value, taste and quality.
Two main points I'm trying to highlight from this: firstly, that in wine it's always worth spending the extra couple of pounds; and secondly that you get what you pay for.

"Wine maketh merry; but money answereth all things."
Ecclesiastes ch. 10, v.19

Suggested wine-style to try this week: New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc - preferably from Malborough.