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The Side Bar
by Tony Arnold

Understanding the Price of Wine

Why is this bottle more expensive than that bottle, what makes it so special? The inevitable question which every wine retailer or wine enthusiast loathes from a customer or a friend entering wine.  The answer to the question is very simple, well fairly simple - marketing, consistency, and pressings. 

Wine Marketing 101 - Selling the One Percent
Since wine naturally contains about 85 to 89 percent water, 10 to 14 percent alcohol, less than 1 percent fruit acids, and hundreds of aroma and flavor components in very small trace amounts, we are really paying for the one percent or less, when we spend $500 for a wine versus $5.

Fortunately that wonderful miniscule one percent can make all the difference in the word between a negative, average, or life altering personal wine experience.   Although we all have different tastes, the winemakers of the world believe they are producing some great wines and depending on how "proud" they are of their wine, the winery, the land, the grapes, and themselves, will price the wines accordingly. 

In addition to the wine maker's "pride", "prestige and reputation" of the land, vines, and winemaker also influence the price of wine.  Would you feel more comfortable buying a first year wine introduction with a new winemaker at the helm of the winery or a first year wine with an old name backing the winery such as Rothschild or Craig Williams (winemaker for Joseph Phelps).  I would bet the old name behind the new wine would bring an exponential increase in the price of that wine.  Will it be any better, maybe, maybe not, but the marketing people figure that the added insurance/assurance of a name brand winemaker adds extra  value (cost) to that bottle of wine on your table.

Consistency - Good this year and... will it be good next year?
The Land - In the words of Stephen Corley (Corley Family and Monticello Vineyards), "Napa doesn't have bad years they have good years, better years, or exceptional years...due to its incredibly perfect geography and soil quality and soil types, Napa always consistently produces at the very worst "good" wine."  Because Napa's grape production is consistently good year after year, it gets the big bucks for its' grapes and rightly so. 

Grapes - Due to the soil and land, Napa grapes cost more than Sonoma, Howell Mountain Napa grapes are more than grapes simply from the Napa Valley.  Tuscan grapes are more expensive than central Italy's Molise region, and so on and so on. More expensive grapes end up making, coincidentally, a more expensive wine.  As a general rule taking the price per ton of grapes divided by 100 will give you the expected retail.  So if the grapes were $5000 per ton, the wine should retail in the $50 range.

The Winemaker - Although the price of the grapes are a starting point for the price of the wine, how the winemaker chooses the grapes, blends vineyards, vintages, and varietals all play into the consistency, value, and price of a wine.  Rather than a consistent style from year to year, some wineries focus on yearly vintage specific releases which express the best that year, its grapes, and what the winemaker could produce - sometimes it will be big and bold, the next maybe a little lighter.  Other wineries focus on overall style consistency (such as Silver Oak Alexander Valley - its always big and oaky) from year to year and will blend (sometimes heavily) a current vintage with previous vintages to produce a wine that changes very little in style and taste from year to year.  Regardless of style, the skill of the winemaker will be shown over a long term period to either produce wines consistently good or inconsistently good, inconsistency is due largely to the quality of grapes, the rest of the variation really is the winemaker's fault.  Both styles can range from very expensive to inexpensive.

Pressings - Squeezing every last dime out of the grape.
Typically the best juice from a grape, is the juice called "first run".  "First run" juice is extracted from the grape by simply crushing (breaking the skin) of the grape with light pressure - this was accomplished by hand, actually more by feet, with the stomping of the grapes.  Today modern grape presses digitally calculate the exact pressure required to split the grapes for first run juice without over pressing the grape. The next step in fine wine making was to simply collect the juice and grapes to begin fermentation. 

The down side from a production perspective is there is still lots of juice in the grape at this point, however the more pressings and pressure the grape is subjected to, more less desirable flavor components, are also extracted from the grape. Although a winemaker judgment call, most wineries today stop after the first or second pressing to avoid the bad stuff getting into the juice and will typically separate each pressings juice for later evaluation and blending prior to or after fermentation.  Some wineries will produce their first and/or second pressings and sell the additional pressings to another winery for a less expensive wine or produce a less expensive wine under a secondary label (separately named wine).  Over pressing to maximize juice volume, is used by many wineries focused more on quantity than quality.

I have heard some so called experts, spout that "this winery uses the same grapes and winemaker as that other more expensive brand, but it's the same wine for less money."  Though possible, this blanket reasoning is false far more than true.  What typically will happen is that brand A ,expensive wine, will use the first run and/or first and/or second pressings, and then will sell the third or additional pressings to the other winery or as it's own winery's other less expensive label.  Another situation is when the winery has selected the best grapes for their wines from the vineyard and are selling the less desirable grapes to other vineyards.  The wines may be close in taste, but they cannot by any sense of the imagination be the same, as they will contain more undesirable flavor components or lesser quality grapes than the best grapes or less "pressed" juice. 

You Generally Get What You Pay For
As a retailer of fine wine, our general rule is that higher priced wines have either some long-term pedigree (a renowned winemaker or vineyard) or produce a consistently good wine year after year (high wine rating).  For less expensive wines, Aimee and I taste over 1500 wines annually to attempt to find the best wine values, sometimes a winery produces a consistently good inexpensive wine, sometimes we have to cherry pick through vintages and wineries to find a great wine for a reasonable price.  Ohh... the pain and agony of wine tasting we subject ourselves to, just to bring you the best wines available, it almost heartwarming.

There are few things in life that compare to good food, good wine, and great company.  Eat, drink, entertain, and enjoy! - Tony Arnold 2005


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