OK, I reeaaaallllllly want to know, is ANYONE paying the new pricing that Wilson Daniels instituted last year and this year on these wines?
Don’t get me wrong, Gaja make incredible wines…I just wonder…did they climb too fast, too soon.
I feel weird just thinking about asking my clients to pay these prices. I mean, it’s not like they are available for less elsewhere, but…
I wasn’t aware of this, so I just looked at pricing. That is aggressive! Did such a big increase happen all at once? I’ve been out of the loop for about 4 years. I wonder what will happen with sales.
Last year or the year before, whenever they changed US importers.
These will be released in Norway tomorrow:
Gaja Barolo Dagromis 2020 $102
Gaja Barolo Sperrs 2020 $435
How does the prices compare?
$500-600 USD on the 2020 Sperss.
To put this in perspective, I bought a 6 pack of the Sperss 2013 for $1236 or $206/per wholesale and to me that seemed fair.
$500+ retail is downright obnoxious, and the only rational thing to do is backfill on the considerably less expensive vintages available at retail with a couple of extra years of bottle age.
But I also hate how producers jack prices up and suddenly make you feel like past vintages you hadn’t been motivated to buy are now a bargain and you should go snap them up.
If you weren’t buying $300 Gaja last month, should you rush out and buy it now because they jacked up the price on the new releases?
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I struggle to see how these wines will sell at this price. There are just to many $500+ wines.
And wines that need a quarter century or longer of bottle age, too.
I mean, you don’t have to do that and probably most people don’t, but then the value proposition is even worse.
This is but one example of an importer seeing gold and raising the floor too high. One of many wines that will end up in closeout in most markets if distribution in said markets is taking wines without pre-orders. US pricing needs a hard reset, and it’s going to have to start at the first tier. American consumers are no longer ok with the start of the chain beginning with 3x-10x markups.
Not sure how much is the winery versus the importer raising pricing, but our cost if way over the last few vintages at retail.