Wine prices going up ...

%^)

At our regular end-of-the-week wine tasting at our local bottle shop, the owner was bemoaning the fact that nearly every bottle of wine he's seen in his new catalogs are way up in wholesale price compared to the previous catalogs ... mentioned he thought the average was somewhere around $2.50 a bottle higher ... he felt the price increases were going to put some of the more low to medium priced wines out of the reach of the clientele he has spent 3 1/2 years establishing ... not a happy camper ...

Are you all seeing this in your respective marketplaces ? Or is this just something peculiar to Arizona ?

Clink !

%^)

Seems to be generally true in our area, Bill. The usual suspect here is transportation costs from oil at $70 a barrel -- companies are starting to increase prices in many areas to cover those costs. Or so I'm told anecdotally.

[James Roscoe]

I haven't seen those kind of price increases in the DC metro area..............Yet.

This is a phenomenon I have talked about extensively in other fora (and in one of the previous incarnations of this one). It is extremely ironic, IMHO opinion, that in a time when so many "gurus" have blabbed about the "democratization of wine", decent wine is quickly going back to the status of a luxury item.

Promote everyday drinking of wine with meals at home? Not so challenging when you can find plenty of under-$10 bottles that offer an interesting and tasty experience. But push the initial price point for "good wine" to $15-20 and all of a sudden we're in a completely different game.

I have often remarked how shocking it was to browse the selection of wines from Spain (a country that is practically dead to me now, wine-wise, but that used to be a great source for value reds and whites not ten years ago) at a well-stocked local retailer here in NYC. Where the average price of a bottle of Spanish wine may have once been closer to $10, now, if I whip out a calculator, that average is around $25...

A strange state of affairs. There ar regions that still give lots of great QPR wines, but price points, even for those regions, have moved up.

If it helps, I did a painful write-up about tasting a couple of hundred wines in search of something good at the old QPR category of $10-and-below. It appears here:

http://www.wineloverspage.com/user_submitted/wine_notes/tn_519189.html

and here (Pt. 2)

http://www.wineloverspage.com/user_submitted/wine_notes/tn_527171.html

and here (Pt. 3)

http://www.wineloverspage.com/user_submitted/wine_notes/tn_533257.html

and here (Pt. 4)

http://www.wineloverspage.com/user_submitted/wine_notes/tn_559341.html

Gnarly work, that...

Seems to be generally true in our area, Bill. The usual suspect here is transportation costs from oil at $70 a barrel -- companies are starting to increase prices in many areas to cover those costs. Or so I'm told anecdotally.

Bob, have you been getting those Acker mailings with the 2005 Bordeaux offers? They're absolutely hilarious.

Oh, and oil at $70 a barrel, of course. Don't forget to blame the Euro, too...

I have a feeling there has been a bit of a loss of perspective in the industry over the past decade that goes far beyond operational costs or inflation.

Oh, I agree with the high end stuff -- over $25 or so, Manuel. I'm awfully happy I've got a big cellar -- "shopping" down there makes me feel awfully good. Especially since I've assigned a dollar a bottle as my "cost" to every single bottle. :-)

Janet's insisted, though, that all of her bottles are $1,000 apiece. Wouldn't sell them for a penny less. Believe me, I avoid "her" shelves.

Thanks for posting the links to your QPR reports -- some very good reading there.

Regards, Bob

[James Roscoe]

LL,
I reread your last report, just about spot on. It ends "To be continued..." So where is the next installment? Has your liver not yet recovered? I notice that some of the better wines on your last report are definitely above $10 in the DC area. The Albrecht Pinot Blanc, a good quaff, is going for around $11 - 12 these days. All in all a confirmation of the original post. I hope to see another sequel. Keep up the good work and keep the faith!
Cheers!
James

LL,
I reread your last report, just about spot on. It ends "To be continued..." So where is the next installment?

After four chapters, I realized there was little point in putting myself through the punishment necessary for a fifth. My liver wasn't suffering, since the contents of the more offensive bottles would go down the kitchen sink. But having wasted a lot of energy--not to mention cash--in search of "Good QPR Under $10" I recognized that the point of very diminishing returns had come. So, no fifth chapter, sorry James. In fact, I doubt that I shall ever undertake such a project again, if the wine world remains the way it is. Gambling has become too dangerous...

[David M. Bueker]

Prices are indeed going up for the well known stuff. The distributors seem to think they can get away with playing the "oil card." One distributor I know said they were adding supplemental delivery charges to cover oil.

If these charges are anything like what happens at my local airport they are using oil as an excuse to create a new profit layer. Simple example...the valet parking bus to the airport travels a 1 mile loop from the base to the airport and back. They have an 86 cent surcharge each way! These buses usually have 5-15 passengers for a 1 mile bus trip. Think they are making some extra profit? I bet that sort of thing is happening at every level of distribution.