How is your average cost per bottle trending?

How is your average cost per bottle trending?

I recently realized that the more I taste, the more I am able to find pleasing wine at a pleasing price. My per-bottle spend is trending down while my per-bottle enjoyment is increasing.

How about you?

You can see a CT report with annual averages at Purchases grouped by Purchase Year - CellarTracker
(Trigger warning! it also shows total spend )

Hey Joe, that is a pretty cool function I was unaware of in CT! My costs started out in 2004 at the low $20s going mostly up with some variation until it reached $115 this year(I’ve mostly been buying Napa Cabs and some big time bottles so far).

Average cost per bottle going up considerably in the 3 years since I started building a cellar. Amount of wine I’m buying going down at the same time.

I’ve been ticking around $20-22/bottle for about 10 years. Previously $30-35 before discovering CT and WB though my overall spending sure has increased.

I have been flat since 2017, but trended up before that. As I rebalance my cellar, I am expecting to start trending up again and buying less for a reduction in bottle count.

Since 2016 I have been trending right in the low $40’s per bottle. The trouble is that I don’t have many $40 wines in my cellar. I have $100+ wines and $20 daily drinkers with a smattering of wines to fill in the in between spaces on a cost graph. I guess it isn’t an actual problem, just a statistical note on the distribution of cost.

I almost choked on my coffee when my eyes glanced over at the total.

I also noticed that my spend has decreased by 60% since my kids were born. Priorities I guess.

EDIT: 2.5 years later and this is my 100th post. Yippie!!! (slowly steps back into the dark lurking corners of Wine Berserkers)

My average spend this year is a bit up at $76 per bottle, but I am happy to say that my purchases are way down from last year (a monthly trend toward buying just a bit over 1/2 of the bottles I bought last year and last year was down by a good bit compared with 2017.

Probably the main reason my average cost is up this year is that I have not bought any German wines. Not really a change other than I have been buying way too many of these and I am trying to reconcile purchases and consumption better. If I could find 2017 Auslesen from Zilliken and Reinhold Haart this might change.

I thought it had to be up, but the data shows it flat over the last 5 years. The top amount I’ve been paying for bottles has been going up, but it’s being offset somehow by more at the lower end (Summer drinkers?).

2019 ($85.ish): I’ve finally reached a point where my cellar feels balanced and where I want it. I’m actively at a place where I’m buying wines to replace what I drink or keep a few favorites going.
2018 ($95.ish): Another year of refining what I wanted. No real regrets…but maybe; just maybe I wish I had bought a little more Krug 164eme
2017 ($75.ish): Keller, Barolo, Champagne, and Burgundy…as much as I could justify and find. No regrets.
2016 ($55.ish): This is largely influenced by my trip to Italy. I spent less, but got more of what I wanted. No regrets this year.
2015 ($60.ish): I bought a house so I spent less and invested in a snow-blower. My biggest regret was turning down 2019 Clos Rougeard for $125/bottle. Just because the price went up $9.
2014 ($65.ish): I got a promotion and my comfort spending money on wine went up. My biggest wine-buying regret was not buying 2010 Bartolo Mascarello at $100/bottle.
2013 ($55.ish): I continued the trend cutting how often I drank and started spending more. My biggest regret was selling some of the 2010 A. et P. de Villaine Mercurey Les Montots at my cost. I really wish I had just saved them. What an awesome wine for $30
2012 ($40.ish): I seriously cut back on my consumption to start buying more expensive wines. My biggest regret from this year; I should have bought more Keller back when they were easier to find.
2011 ($28.ish): My first real pay-raise post grad school. Wines got a little more expensive this year. I wish I had realized just how awesome Pierre Peters Les Chetillons was…I only bought one bottle of the 2004.
2010 ($20.ish): Working in wine retail; wines for cost…but my price was going up. Finished Grad School and moved to Portland, ME. Living that first year got expensive…so there was not much buying power. Purchases I regret not buying now: 1996 Salon for $300, 1996 Krug for $300, and 1995 Musar for $72.
2009 ($20.ish): Working in wine retail; wines for cost…but my price was going up.
2008 ($20.ish): Working in wine retail; wines for cost…but my price was going up.
2007 ($16.ish): The first year I worked as the Wine Director for an award winning restaurant. Part of the deal was getting to buy wines at cost. So this doesn’t accurately reflect the value of the wines I bought…but it was about what I paid per bottle.
2006 ($10.ish): I’d been out of the Army for a year at this point and was a full time college student. This was the first year I worked in the wine industry at a retail store. Most of what I was buying was distributor close-outs and wines at cost from the small wine shop I worked at. While low, I stretched my $10/bottle this year. I drank a Romanian Pinot Noir for like $6 that was just plain awesome for the $. Regrets…not realizing that $115 for a 2002 Lafite Rothschild would be the last time I saw a first growth for under $200/bottle.

It’s a one-way ratchet.

Is there any other trend but up? This is WB after all. What is really interesting is the cognitive distortion for what a “deal” price is. I say to myself, “Man that Rousseau Chambertin at $1,200.00 a bottle, WHAT A DEAL!”

Other humans should look at us as aliens…

Well, that goes for anything in life. Matter of perception but I hear you.

This is definitely an interesting report and I’m trying not to look at that last column!

Unfortunately, since I just transferred over to CT last year a large majority of my wines got imported with purchase dates of 2018. However, since most of my purchases are through mailing lists/clubs sorting by Vintage should be pretty accurate with about a 1-2 year lag.

My average cost per vintage went from about $60 in 2008 to $70 in 2018 with peaks of $74 in '13 and '15, which I believe corresponds to buying more Napa Cab and price increases for a few of my favorite Paso vineyards. It’s actually trending down for '16 as I’ve been concentrating on being more selective in my top end wines, cutting back somewhat on mid level wines and finding more cellar defenders in the $30-$40 range.

I might need to make a project of going in and manually entering purchase dates to get a more accurate report.

Holy crap! Do you keep a diary?!
Wish I had this kind of detail on my spend, but -like you - I’d probably say it varies over time. Some years you buy more of an expensive area, some years you drink down, and some you buy a lot of everyday pedestrian stuff. I think it balances out over time, but would probably look like a brokerage statement with some really bad years and really good years mixed in but perhaps without the directional bias the stock market has.

After accumulating a sufficient supply of higher end(decades later substantially higher end) bottles I am stocking the cellar with near term drinkers from Italy, France and CA mostly in the $$20-$40 range and remain on a handful of prime mailing lists with more expensive wines. I also drink the brands I sell.

The quality of wines in my drinkers range has risen rapidly in recent times to the point of surprising levels of satisfaction/pleasure.

Seek and ye shall/can find CA producers not burdened by recent vineyard purchases, nor greedy and make decent profits via reasonable DTC pricing primarily as opposed to FOB pricing for traditional distribution.

Through the roof. As I’ve shifted purchases to mostly Napa cabs, wines are rarely under 50 and Larry over $100 more than not.

Marcus, I use this CellarTracker. It’s under reports and helps me average out by year. It’s the one investment in wine I don’t flinch at.

Trended up for about 5 years, now trending down as I’m branching outside of drinking mostly pinot noir and chardonnay.

Up. And that’s by design. I’ve got waaaay too many wines that occupy that $30 - $100 zone. Despite efforts to spend more per bottle and buy less bottles, I’m finding that old habits are extremely difficult to break …

Never checked, no clue, no real interest