Where do you live? If you have a good local merchant, work with them.
Tell them you’d like to try six (or twelve) good and various-styled $50 burgs.
Then come back to us and tell us what you liked and why, and what you didn’t like and why. Then we’ll be of more use.
This worked well for my wife and me, years ago.
Funny story. After getting her to agree to the experiment, our first bottle was a Fourrier Gevrey Chambertin (then <$50, now closer to $100). She liked it but didn’t love it. She thought it was super acidic, but agreed to keep going. After twenty different bottles, she finally found one that she loved. It was that same Fourrier. To this day she insists I trained her to like burgs. The acidity does take acclimation.
some of these wines mentioned really push the $50 envelope for sure. HN Bourgogne is a solid perennial well under the range bet, as is Meo Camuzet’s Bourgogne. You can get about 10 bottlings from the previously mentioned Tardy et Fils that meet the requirement, and are really solid wines. I bought a Fixin La Place from Envoyer for $19 last week! Voillot VV mentioned is a solid bet, Pataille has some great bottlings in that range (I personally think much better than the CT scores). Barthod Bourgogne is maybe gonna be JUST above the range, but like others mentioned its basically a village wine with a regional label, so I still think that makes it a good QPR. Bize was also mentioned but great value in Savigny.
I would also add Benjamin Leroux to the list as he hasn’t been mentioned yet. he’s got a couple bottlings that fall within the price range.
This is a complete waste of your time, your energy, your money, and, most importantly of all, the wear & tear on your body from swallowing all that swill and suffering through the hangovers afterwards.
Don’t do it.
Don’t throw away all that money & burn all of those new wrinkles permanently into your face & suffer through that hacking cough that never seems to dissipate.
Turn your back and walk away with your spirits high & your dignity intact.
I listed probably 8 wines in the post you quoted alone that I would consider gateway wines. now if OP is looking for epiphany wines- sure I agree with you. But IMO those are very different. people don’t have to lose their mind over gateway wines, they just need to get hooked on the idea. Meo camuzet and Barthod’s Bourgognes can absolutely do that. to me, a gateway just needs to make someone think “wow… if this is what the sub-$50 wine is… imagine what the $100 wine is like!”
Drinking a 2016 Billard Gonnet Bourgogne tonight that clocks in around $35-40. Wasn’t impressed at all the first hour and then Pretty awesome from there. Very traditional/earthy, I wonder if this mostly Pommard?
The Marsannays from Charles Audoin are all great values and I prefer them over the base Bourgogne bottlings from a lot of producers. I do also agree with the recommendation to dabble in a few high-quality producers’ village offerings at a slightly higher entry price to get a view into the upper leagues.