Is more expensive wine better?

This is a question that seems to come up all the time at our store. This question can bring up a myriad of answers, some say yes some say no and some say it depends. There are so many factors that go into pricing a wine. Cost of land, cost of farming, cost of potentially irrigating, physically making the wine, ageing (barrels), marketing, shipping, demand, etc. That is just the surface of what goes into producing a bottle of wine. I will try and do my best to help answer the question by dissecting what goes into the cost.

Property- This is fairly simple, property in the Napa Valley or Burgundy is a lot more expensive to purchase than land in Missouri. That being said, property is even hard to come by in these areas. A lot of wine that you drink probably isn’t estate fruit; meaning someone owns the land and the vines. A winery or winemaker will negotiates a contract with the grower for a certain amount of time and essentially buys the grapes from the farmer. Inexpensive and expensive wine goes through this process. Burgundy for example is built on Negociant’s. Although they may own a few parcels of land the majority of the grapes are purchased through contracts and then made in their facility (sometimes not even made in their facility). So does this make the wine more expensive? My answer: Its two people collecting money instead of one.

Farming- If you harvest your crop of grapes with a huge tractor which picks up everything, not just grapes you cut your harvest time and cost by a lot. If you pick each cluster by hand it takes a long time… If you use pesticides to keep away unwanted things you can save a lot of your crop… If you don’t use pesticides you have to find natural ways to keep disease and bad things away. This usually cost more money. Organic=expensive; in general.

Production/Ageing: New French oak barrels are going from 1000-1500 dollars a barrel. If you age a wine in 100% new French oak for 18 months, it cost a lot of money. If you age your wine in massive stainless steel tanks that can be reused it costs less. I think a general rule about making wine is that if you are doing more by hand the more it costs.

Marketing/Shipping/Demand: I will keep this simple. It costs money to advertise, chances are if you see a wine being advertised on National Television or in every magazine; somebody or some company with a lot of money is behind it. Shipping is simple; Wine from France generally costs more here because they ship it here. Demand is the same. The more people want it, the less there is available. Less available plus high demand = more money.

In summary; you can find great wine at a great price and you can definitely overpay for product. I always say “If you like it, then it is good wine.” I have recently been enjoying a lot of Spanish wine. I feel like this region is producing a lot of great value wines. I also love Burgundy and to be real it’s not cheap.

Drink what you like
Nick, Wine Buyer.