I'd guess you'd get 6 glasses max from a bottle of Pinot Grigio. Therefore they make €40.50 on the bottle rather than €30. That's an extra €10.50. However the bottle might not be used so you would have to allow for wastage. There is also a labour cost in supplying wine by the glass, extra glasses used etc. So €6.75 per glass, while on the high side, is not a rip off (or an excessively high price).
In my opinion a major cause of what people think of as our “Rip-off” culture is the low prices that people see in Spain and Portugal. I have attached a list of minimum wage rates for some western countries below. The figures given are for gross monthly income, without overtime, for someone on the minimum wage. Therefore the disparity is greater than suggested below since out direct taxes are much lower than most northern European countries. The % of people on the minimum wage is also important (in Spain it’s over 10%) as is the distribution of wealth.
What really matters as a measure of how expensive things are is purchasing power (Big Mac index, Starbucks coffee index etc). If you look at that then Ireland is not that expensive.
Personally I would rather live in a country that tries not to economically disenfranchise it’s poor, even if that means a glass of wine is a bit more expensive than it might be.
International comparison of monthly statutory national minimum wage rates, January 2003 Country
Luxembourg
1,369 260
Netherlands
1,249 237
Belgium
1,163 221
France
1,154 219
UK
1,105 210
Ireland
1,073 204
USA
877 142
Spain
526 100
Portugal
416 79
Source: Eurostat.
If you look at
here you will see that we are ranked 8th out of 22 in a European study of real purchasing power. That would lead me to conclude that there is no real "Rip off" (or more correctly, profiteering) culture in Ireland. I agree with ClubMan’s definition of a rip off and think that the phrase is used far too loosely.