I’ve recently cooked up a storm in the kitchen, attempting my first beef bourguignon. I cheated; I used a ready-made Gourmet Burgundy Sauce. (I don’t start with the hardcore stuff; I need the easy stuff to lure me in) And I am not ashamed of it, because it still took me a good 3 hours to prepare. My husband loved it, and raved about it to his friends, and I was a proud cook. Since a cook has to grow into a chef some day (and the supermarket seems to have discontinued the sauce) and my confidence level is at its peak, I felt now is the right time to kick it up a notch. I am going to make a real boeuf bourguignon by using a bottle or 2 of the real stuff – red wine! And in comes the big question - which wine do I buy? This, of course, leads to 10,000 other equally valid questions. Which type of grape? What is burgundy wine? Does it have to be wine from that region? What did Julia Child say? Is this wine too cheap? or am I spending too much on this wine?
I went all out researching. And thank goodness I found the following article. It confirmed my sneaking suspicion all along – that cooking is a great equalizer! Cooking levels the playing field between the cheap and the expensive. What does this mean for you? It means this: Drink up the expensive wine while you knock yourself out with cooking the cheap bottles! 
It Boils Down To This: Cheap Wine Works Fine
by JULIA MOSKIN
In the beginning, there was cooking wine.
And Americans cooked with it, and said it was good.
Then, out of the darkness, came a voice.
Said Julia Child: ”If you do not have a good wine to use, it is far better to omit it, for a poor one can spoil a simple dish and utterly debase a noble one.”
And so we came to a new gospel: Never cook with a wine you wouldn’t drink.
For my generation of home cooks, this line now has the unshakable ring of a commandment. It was the first thing out of the mouth of every expert I interviewed on the subject.
But it is not always helpful in the kitchen. For one thing, short of a wine that is spoiled by age, heat or a compromised cork, there are few that I categorically would not drink. (Although a cooking wine, which is spiked with salt and sometimes preservatives, has never touched my braising pot.)
And once a drinkable wine has been procured, trying to figure out whether it is the best one for a particular recipe can seem impossible. How much of the wine’s subtler qualities will linger in the finished dish? How much of the fruit flavor? Does it matter whether the wine is old or young, inexpensive or pricey, tannic or soft?
Two weeks ago I set out to cook with some particularly unappealing wines and promised to taste the results with an open mind. Then I went to the other extreme, cooking with wines that I love (and that are not necessarily cheap) to see how they would hold up in the saucepan.
After cooking four dishes with at least three different wines, I can say that cooking is a great equalizer.
i wanted to watch Julie vs. Julia!