Buying wine in a retail store these days should be a pleasure for daily consumers of widely available, reasonably priced table wines.

In the last year, various forces have impacted wine sales around the world. With sales of almost all wines declining, so are prices. Standard table wines that normally sell for between $10 and $30 today are being discounted so heavily that many people can now afford to buy more quality products at fair prices.

An example should suffice.

One of the most reliable sauvignon blancs every year is a gorgeous wine from Villa Maria, an exceptional producer based in Marlborough, New Zealand. It's 2023 sauvignon blanc normally sells for about $15.

But if you lived in Chicago, it would cost you $9. Considering the quality of this wine, I believe it ought to sell for $20, based on its quality.

Yet if you lived in Virginia Beach, Va., the same wine would cost you $25. Since the wholesale price in Chicago is roughly the same as it is in Virginia, I can't believe the huge discrepancy.

Readers may now think I know something that average consumers could never know. Although that may be, the secret to this is no secret at all. The Internet provides a solution. Anyone not using research capabilities is simply paying too much for wine.

The non-secret is winesearcher.com.

This website, which I have written about before, is a New Zealand-owned company that for decades has provided an amazing service. It has a huge wine database. You put into a search box the name of a wine, and within seconds, it tells you where it can be found, something about it and how much it should cost.

It also lists every outlet in the world where the wine is available! And one more exclamation point: it's free.

Since it works for almost any wine, let's see what it can do:

If you wanted 2021 Villa Antinori Chianti, a widely seen excellent Italian red wine, the national average price is $20, Wine Searcher shows. It also says that one store has it for $14, and another for $32.

Clearly, if the lowest price for a wine you want is at a store nowhere near where you live, the only practical way to take advantage of the lower price is to buy a case of it and pay for shipping.

I have done this often when the wine and shipping still save me money.

But the real reason to go to the Wine Searcher site is that it gives a frame of reference as to what your local supermarket is charging for widely distributed table wines. Very few supermarket discount wines the way fine wine shops do.

The ultimate message here is simple: Doing a little homework in advance by using this excellent tool will save you a lot of money and make you a savvier wine consumer.

Wine of the Week: 2023 Bonny Doon Picpoul, Central Coast ($16) — Picpoul is an interesting old grape variety that has made lovely dry white wines in the south of France for decades. This great version has aromas of slate, kiwi, green apple and lime. Though it is crisp, it is also so well made that it works beautifully with Thai food. Wine Searcher shows that Bottle Barn in Santa Rosa, Calif., has it for $11.99.

To find out more about Sonoma County resident Dan Berger and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate webpage at www.creators.com.

Photo credit: Markus Spiske at Unsplash