Its tough to taste a $10 wine and a $100 wine blind and say "oh this one is much better than this other one". But it's easy to taste a wine and say "this is earthy" or "this is fruity" or "this is peppery". Earthier wines tend to be from grapes that are in more mineral present soil. Have you been wine tasting in a major region before? It's actually a fantastic experience. There's so much complexity in wine flavor.
This is also demonstrably false in the wine industry. Soil has a direct impact on the outcome of your grapes, e.g. fields that have water runoff from mountainous/rocky areas produce wine that tastes more of minerals.