It's been well established that price affects the perception of quality, and Mike Steinberger seems to have fallen prey to this cognitive trap: the best of the sub-$15 wines are "pleasant" and "quaffable," while the sub $150 wines are outstanding and "as pure as you'll find." Notably, however, while they present excellent value compared to more expensive wines, the overall sense is that even at these prices, cost is directly traded off against utility -- the most expensive wines are better still, but only marginally so.
I don't doubt that he could (more or less) repeat these ordinal rankings under blinded conditions, but that doesn't suggest objectivity, rather only that his palate is an experienced detector of cost indicators. In wine,
good is arbitrary, they say.
This doesn't mean Steinberger isn't a useful wine critic; the problem is that there isn't much in the review to help us evaluate his reliability (in fact, I'd guess the linear correlation of price to preference is a weak indicator of untrustworthiness). If Slate really cared about helping its readers pick wine bargains, they might start by having Steinberger and a few cohorts of wine drinkers divided by level of expertise (say, novice, enthusiast, and connoisseur, with some indication of what those levels mean in real terms) rank a few of these choices (or better yet a group of wines of varying price, quality [expert judgement], and popularity). This would have dual benefit of giving me a notion of what wines unbiased people like me (fellow novices) liked, as well as some measure of how well Steinberger's advice predicts our preferences.
I would be happy to volunteer.
