Wine Prices

Be Adventurous with Wine Purchases

First of all, being adventurous or willing to try new things is a great asset when it comes to purchasing inexpensive, good, drinkable wine. If you are a cabernet lover, there are other producers out there besides Silver Oak and Jordan. Point being, if you’re willing to try wines you are not familiar with at a price of $10 or below, you can find some great bottles. Right now Australia and South America have a huge edge on providing value price wines without tasting like value wines. Right now Australia, for example, is making chardonnay and syrah and selling them for less than $5 per bottle! Little Penguin—Australia’s #1 selling chardonnay right now—is taking this nation by storm. On the South America side sauvignon blanc and malbec aren’t too slouchy either…I purchased a sauvignon blanc from Chile by a producer named “Casa Lapostolle yesterday for $3.99 at a local liquor store that has a great wine selection. I thought the wine was great…nice crisp grapefruit and acidity, and the level of grassiness that makes sauvignon blanc so refreshing and of course the wine's price was quite satisfying. This is an easy quaffer for that price, and there are others in the same ballpark.

Ways to Try More Wine

Another tip I tell my wine classes is that the more you try, the more wines you find that you like! Makes sense doesn’t it? Sure, you will drink some not-so-stellar wines, but you will also find some gems and surprises that you will remember and purchase later. One good way to be able to try more wines is to get a wine tasting group together. You can get together once a month let’s say…you bring a bottle and everyone else does the same. Maybe you can set a rule that no one can spend over $10 for the wine price. Or perhaps you feel rather spendy and want to try high-end Pinot Noirs over $30…it works the same. Now you have access to trying many other wines of the same type that you didn’t pay for! It’s a great way to learn and discover.

Wine Price Factors

OK, so we’ve talked about how to not spend a great deal of money on drinking wine, but really didn’t talk about what drives wine prices overall. What makes Opus One $150 a bottle whereas other Napa Valley Cabernets from the same area sell for much less? Well…that’s a tricky question. There are some cost factors to consider:

1) The cost of the grapes is perhaps the biggest factor in the price of the wine. If the winery is paying top dollar for the grapes to be farmed perfectly and picked gently, etc. you can bet that the cost is not only high, but that the cost will be passed onto you to make a profit.

2) What kind of oak was used in the process of the winemaking? Was it French oak from a good forest at about $950 a barrel? If so, then that raises the price. If it spends a long time in the oak (15-24 months) then that also raises the price because the wine is sitting at the winery for a longer period of time being cared for and not sold. On the other hand, if the winery is using oak chips to flavor their wine, you can bet it won’t be nearly as expensive as using a real barrel.

3) Winery overhead accounts for some of the price of the bottle as well. If the winery is a large one, with office staff and the like, then you have to make enough money to pay for those people with the wine you sell.

4) This is probably the most controversial and thought-provoking on the list of what attributes to the price of wine. This is a category I call “perceived value”. If the market for your wine is the high-end one, your pricing structure has to be too. This is where marketing is involved. There is a perceived value to a wine that is, let’s say, $50+. You see that bottle on the shelf and you automatically think, “For that price, it must be good!” If you don’t think that way then good for you…but most people do.

Secondary Wine Market

If your wine is highly sought-after the secondary market can drive those prices even higher! If you bought a bottle of Pinot Noir for $50 off of a mailing list and could turn around and sell it to someone who was not on the mailing list, they will pay you handsomely for it. Cult wines have this happen to them all the time…so if you are looking for that highly-sought after bottle, be prepared to pay for it. Supply and demand is alive and well.

Explore!

Now, that’s not to say you should never drink wine over $50…there are some wines I have tried over this price that have been stunningly delicious. All I am saying is that you don’t need to spend this much to get a good wine every time, that’s all. We all know we can splurge every once in a while, but not on a daily basis (at least I can’t). Being willing to try new wines and getting with people who are willing to try them with you is a good step on the way to finding wines at ALL price points you can fall in love with. The journey should be a fun one, enjoy it!