I pulled out one of my 2005 Fritz Haag Brauneberger Juffer-Sonnenuhr Riesling Auslese bottles to drink. Tagging the bottle as consumed in CT, I see the obnoxiously maroon “Where to buy” button with Wine-Searcher offering the bottle at the humble low of…$703.88. Wha?
Samhain is over, Krampusnacht is a few weeks from now, Rudy is in jail and couldn’t have swapped the contents of these bottles for DRC Montrachet. Must be some Artificial Intelligence noodly appendage run amok.
Thinking that surely this must be a pricing mistake, I checked the other retailers via my non-Pro WS search. Nope, not a mistake. Multiple US retailers are listing this wine with prices ranging from $686 to $875 per bottle. Right, they’re all colluding on price with each other and their pricing robots are smoking crack while looking at W-S, sure. This can’t be true worldwide tho, yeah?
Nope, it’s true worldwide. Widening the search on W-S to worldwide, multiple retailers in UK, Singapore, HK and China list the same wine. The only clue to something being systemically wrong somewhere underneath the hood is that all of these offers are for a pre-arrival 6-pack.
I know the wine isn’t worth this much. In CT the WMJ auction records show the wine going for $40-$50 per bottle in 2022 and $40 for a 375ml in early 2023. On W-S you can pull up the GK bottling of the same juice for $50-70 per bottle. Only UK retailers listing the GK but my point still stands.
What’s happening here?