You want to use @{...} to dereference the array reference. That is, @{$sort->{23}} will get you a list. For your specific problem, I'd do:

my $search = 'price';
my $column = 23;
if (grep {$_ eq $search} @{$sort->{$column}}) {
  # ...
}
[download]

perl -pe '"I lo*`+$^X$\"$]!$/"=~m%(.*)%s;$_=$1;y^`+*^e v^#$&V"+@( NO CARRIER'