Question About Pricing on Magnums

I know that there is no ‘consistency’ in terms of how wineries price their magnums, but I’m wondering if there’s consensus as to whether you give club discounts on these magnums to your club members?

I’m thinking that I will not but just want to see what others usually do.

Cheers!

Where I have done them we did enough and priced them so that we could still do club discount. At one house we just did them for auctions and the library so they were not really for sale.

The pricing of mags and half bottles are hard to get right. Consumers want 2x retail 750ml for mags and .5x retail for halfs. Neither of which work out for the winery as I am sure you know. Buying that small of a volume of glass saves no one. I had good luck pricing mags 2.5-3x retail of the 750ml on decent runs comparative to the 750ml lot size. Halfs I have had more trouble with but when priced to move by the case they worked out well DTC but not wholesale.

Yeah, I think it depends how much demand there is for them. With a large run the base price can be just a little over double the 750ml price. With a small run you’d probably want to price in a little disincentive, so they don’t sell out too fast.

Anyway, I can imagine not giving club members their discount - even it’s a secret the mags even exist. That doesn’t mean the base price can’t be a little higher. Maybe $75 for a mag of $35 red. $110 for the $50. Higher markup the less you bottle, maybe to $80 and $120. Above that is probably too much for you, but that much seems reasonable.

I generally like the approach of Cadence. For Camerata/Bel Canto, they sell the bottles at $30, $60, and $125 for the 375mL, 750mL, and 1.5L respectively. For Ciel du Cheval and Tapteil, they price the same sized bottles at $26, $45, and $95. Personally I think the Ciel/Tapteil 375mLs should be $25, but the pricing seems reasonable. As a consumer, I feel like it’s a little bit of a screw job paying much more than double the cost of a 750mL for a magnum. Charging much more feels to me like the winemaker is sending the message that the wine is less important if you’re buying a magnum, what’s more important then is the novelty or scarcity of a fancy bottle. I also think it’s cool that Cadence considers a mag to equal two 750mLs as far as getting free shipping on a case of 12. And they do give discounts to club members and/or purchases above certain amounts.

That’s how it may seem on the outside, but 1.5Ls (and 375ML) are more expensive to produce. A sizable part of our production goes into 1.5Ls. Most of our lots are 100cs or less and we bottle 15 cases of mags for almost all of our bottlings.

We charge approximately 10% over the cost of two 750ML bottles. That does not cover our increased costs or effort in producing the mags (bottles, bottling, additional bottling time, additional bottling labor, bottling line changes, additional storage fees, shipping, etc).

To break even we’d need to be around 15%. If we factor in the additional work / headaches, and that we tie up an additional couple thousand dollars in cash before the wines are sold, it should be higher if we expect a return for that.

It is common to see 1.5Ls at about 20% above the cost of 2 bottles. From a costs perspective (if they are like mine), that makes sense.

My magnums are so much more expensive to produce. For instance, since I screen print all my bottles, the difference just to print the “labels” is over 8 times MORE for the magnum. And since there are artwork,film and screen set up charges that are standard for ANY run, if you are running just 48 magnums instead of 1600 750mls, you can see how the cost is higher per bottle. No way around it with my type of packaging.

As for finished bottle cost, my Special Selection opens at $95/bottle, and the magnums are $210.

This is a great thread.

I used to think like Scott Everson on pricing, but now I understand the up charge on magnums, and am more likely to buy them.