Wine, at it's humble roots, was meant for the masses not just for the elite. I just think wineries who charge such high prices have lost sight of that fact.
Well, actually, Tim, you're pretty much erroneous there too.
Wine, from it's beginning, as best we can tell, was NOT meant for the masses. It was the beverage of choice of the religious/noble/wealthy elite who could afford it. Beer was the fermented beverage of the masses (and beer such that it had to be consumed through what amounted to a drinking straw with a sieve built in to filter out the sediment).
Roman times? Same, really, if you're talking about "good wine". The wine for the slaves, the poor, and the soldiers, was wine mixed (adulterated, thinned out) with all number of things, but most commonly salt water (yeah, salt water). So what the masses were drinking usually wasn't what we think of wine (and in truth what we think nowadays of wine is not at all what the ancients were drinking, even the highest class and most wealthy, but that's another story).
Nope, sorry, wine was perceived as a luxury beverage for a few thousand years, and didn't really become a commonly cosumed wine of the masses until the "Middle Ages" of Europe. Even in wine-consuming Britain, wine was perceived as, and consumed by, largely the noble classes and wealthy merchants. Even when wine did become widely available, the masses you speak of generally preferred the distilled beverages---cheaper, and you got the buzz on faster, dontcha know! Just the thing if you're living in Cheapside.
Nowadays, of course, what with the rise of the heretofore minimal or unknown "middle class", wine is available to most, and affordably by most (if, that is, they don't want Screaming Birds of Prey), so it's a different game. You can afford what in other ages the humble masses would have been amazed to have available: drinkable wine, instead of rancid swill. Instead of pulling a Miniver Cheevy, you should be celebrating that you live in the best possible time for being a wine consumer.
But history simply does not support your own personal thesis of the vinous proletariat, yearning to break the chains over their moderately priced Chateau d'Yquem.
Not that that matters, of course.