A friend of ours shared some great cabernets of his with us once and we finally found the style of reds we love. The problem was, they were all older vintage and to buy them @$30-$50 bottle was getting expensive.
Then one day we stumbled across a wine handbook by an australian guy named Jeremy Oliver who is a professional taster. We checked out our tastes against his ratings and were surprised to see that he rated some of ours, and our friends selections highly.
We then selected a few new ones based on his ratings and found that they were to our liking as well. His guide gives a year by year rating and age to cellar range.
His rating system is very accurate and we don't buy now unless we have seen it rated.
My suggestion to any wine novice is to note what you like, find a guide or taster that rates them in a way that you can use as a comparison and then try from that guide.
Our collection has risen to nearly 300 bottles and we stopped buying 2 years ago...... (but still manage to browse through Dan Murphy's cellar releases..)
Here is Jeremy's website for those overseas (and local) I highly recommend him.
http://www.onwine.com.au/