The Inexorable Rise of Wine Prices

After stating I’m done quoting articles, I’m back within 24 hours…sheesh.

Data quoted in this article could be dubious, but I found this interesting…

At the end of May 2014, the global average price for a bottle of wine was $35.50; this would rise to $36.80 by 2015 and $39 by the following year. 2017 saw a sharp rise, to $44.50, and that had risen to $48.50 by last May. It currently stands at $59.30, an increase of 60 percent.

60% across the board increase over 5 years…can that be right?

Full article here: https://www.wine-searcher.com/m/2019/06/the-inexorable-rise-of-wine-prices

The global average price for a bottle of wine is 59.30?

NO.

Yeah, that didn’t seem right.

I don’t know the “global average price for a bottle of wine”, but I guarantee you that it is under five bucks (I’m talking about single bottles of 750ml). I don’t believe anybody is calculating this, but my guess would be ~$2 - 3. Wine-Searcher doesn’t list a single retailer in Wenzhou.

Dan Kravitz

Basically averaging bottle prices and ignoring consumption. A bottle of Romanee Conti has huge impact on pricing, while a high consumption wine like Yellowtail has mathematically very little.

Trawling through Wine-Searcher’s database…

So, it appears they’re only looking at prices of wines listed on their site, as well as not factoring production volume. Then, is it even the lowest price listed or some average that includes the high-ball listings? I agree with Dan, the real average is probably in the $2-3 range.

Yeah, faulty math. I’m 0/3 on reposted articles. Need a thread on “improving wine journalism”.

And Yellowtail probably sells more wine in the US than France.

I saw this article too and thought these numbers made no sense. Terrible reporting.

It looks to me like all the figures mean is that winesearcher users are upgrading their wine choices.

Ya, I don’t think they’re accounting for volume.

It’s fun that you are posting so don’t stop!

Gallo sells around a billion bottles a year alone, huge effect on average price

Depends if it is a weighted average or if it is a simple average of each individual bottling.

It is obviously a simple average; weighted average would be closer to $10 I suspect.

Definitely not average by volume. Probably a simple average over labels/vineyard. If this is the case, it means the new labels cost more than before.

So, if someone looks at a bottle of Romanee Conti (let us say at 1000 bottles sold in the US) at $20,000 a bottle and another mass produced wine (say selling two million bottles in the US) at say $3 a bottle, the average price of wine is $10,000 a bottle? Wow!!!

Or to put it another way, Romanee Conti raises the price of 10,000 wines by around a dollar.

Need a new calculator Howard

They need to circle back when Trader Joe’s, Costco, and Jumbo start listing prices on Searcher.