BevMo used to (still does?) do the same thing with their 5 Cent sale. They’d just jack the prices before putting them all on sale.
All this baloney about the price decreases as compared to '22 and '21 is exactly that: baloney. Did the prices come down? Sure. But does that mean what the chateau and distribution chain hope us end-consumers will believe it means? Hell no. And every time a chateau/retailer/distributor says something designed to convince consumers to see things they way they (chateau/retailer/distributor) want things to be seen, it comes across as intellectually dishonest and insulting. This conjures a saying I learned growing up: “Don’t piss on my leg and tell me it’s raining.”
FWIW, increases and decreases are always measured against the previous vintage. Measuring against vintages from days gone by is never a consideration. It’s always year to year.
As for 22, 2022 was pricey as a future. However, having tasted at least 700 wines, it’s an extraordinary vintage that will delivery sublime drinking for decades. The wines are stunning!
For wines of that quality with the ability to age and evolve 20-30-40-50 years, they are competitively priced with wines from every other wine region. Yea, you can drop a name here and there, but it’s hard to find better red wines for the money.
Jeff, just because this was the way it was done previously does not mean it is acceptable In 2021 and especially 2022, it was abused; kooky pricing and what appears to be massive corrections. Wine lovers are not dumb, nor do they like being made fools of.
That being said, 2019s have mostly disappeared from the market place, and the prices seem somewhat reasonable.
I don’t think the issue over the past few years is the price per se (although this thread is replete with people who will compare 2022 to other years) since I think a sizable number of ep buyers want more than two vintages a decade in their cellar and compared to Napa etc the prices weren’t high - I think the issue is that there is no longer an expectation that the prices will go up between ep and the bottles being released.
And uniformly across the trade EP 23 is being labelled as a disaster by merchants and consumers alike
As identified here, people see through the price decrease and there’s comparatively little demand. EP gross transaction values have been plummeting in recent years at UK leading merchants and I think this year will be the worst of the most recent, but we won’t know definitively for a few years until books are released.
Ps will look at the analytics as requested tomorrow, sorry, got distracted with baby stuff tonight
It’s been that way since the 2009 vintage for most wines. For the majority of releases, waiting and not buying EP is not unreasonable. If waiting paid off, and it usually does, great. If prices moved past the original price, that’s how it goes as well, up, or down.
In a high-interest environment, such as we have today, for most wines I’d wait.
In a low interest economy, if I was still buying young wines, I’d probably buy because the difference in price over a decade or more would not matter.
2 points some of you should ponder, and keep track of… Currency exchange rates. The dollar is strong today. That can change in either direction.
And 2024 could end up a small vintage as they’re having lots of issues with mildew.
If 2025 has issues, or is not strong, that will have an impact on prices. And of course is 2025 is great, that’s going to put downward pressure on 23.
Yeah that’s correct, wines are being mostly released with a bit of a premium to 2019 secondary pricing, which doesn’t make sense as 85% of 2019 wines scores better than 2023 counterparts
I don’t get this. I can’t buy most 2019s anywhere near the price of 2023 EP. For example in my market 2023 Pichon Lalande is $145 and 2019 is $220. VCC 2023 is $239 and 2019 is $300.
Okay, I understand. In the US there was a blip last year when CostCo had their 2019s and were selling at or even under EP prices. Those were great deals but you had to strike quickly and what each store had was variable. Other than that I think prices of 2019s have been relatively high since release, though certainly not at the level of 2022.
Whether 2023 makes sense EP I’m not sure, but I think some of these comparisons are very market dependent. The wines I’m buying are only those that I collect in most years. In the long run I guess I probably lose a bit on value buying EP, but I have never regretted it.
Yeah, I was confused by this notion that it didn’t make sense to buy 2023 because it’s basically the same price as 2019 right now. That didn’t seem true in my local market – I’m guessing that isn’t true for the U.S. in general.
(though I mainly buy 80s and 90s Bordeaux on the secondary market, if I buy Bordeaux at all, so I’m not really keeping track).
Yes 23 Montrose @714/6… Sure a 30%+ price drop in line with some other wines would have been nice. but then it’s a super-banal observation to say ‘cheaper, better,’ Duh. Given the glowing reviews, it feels like a good buy. I took a dozen bottles to round out my EP purchases this year.
