I know that there are a lot of ITB people who participate here. Anecdotally, I’m seeing the high end stuff not moving from local store shelves. Granted, New Orleans is a poor city, but it seems to be stagnant at a greater level. I just received an email for a Tignanello collection that I had previously received about a month ago. I’m sure that there are other contributing factors, like Gen Z’s lack of interest and boomers cutting back, but I have to believe that the economy is the main cause of reduced sales.
It doesn’t seem to be affecting ticket sales for Taylor Swift.
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Spirits are stealing share.
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I think a bigger part is that wine price increases over the last 5 years were insane and unjustified in many cases. The price hike in champagne was so severe that several houses are now slashing prices to move anything. I recently got 2012 cristal for less than my local is trying to move Dom so something has to give along the way.
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We’ve kind of already had this conversation in other threads about pricing, but I think it’s more a factor of prices escalating faster than was sustainable. At this point it’s just a standard market correction where supply is outpacing demand at the price points offered. But I’ve already started to see prices falling in some cases, which then moves the product. Once those offers go 2 or 3 rounds with no takers and then are reoffered at discounts, they will move.
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The economy is so strong it’s hurting sales? Is that what you’re saying? Too much employment-stock market too high?
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Just posted a topic on this, referencing today’s Chronicle article. A number of data points and possible reasons are included.
The wine economy is not the same as the wider economy. The people most effected by economic winds are not those buying Tiganello and Dom P.
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I for one welcome lowering prices for wine, whenever that will come
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This is not correct. The people who have benefited the most over the past couple of years are lower-wage workers. It’s the people at the top whose incomes are flat.
Problem is inflation more than the economy. Prices up 21% since 2020.
Don’t care who you are…. Losing more than 1/5th of your buying power puts a crimp in any purchasing
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Making a loan from your 401K to buy wine is probably not a good idea.
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Unless it’s in BREIT….
And who suggested doing that?
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…that’s your takeaway from my post? Seriously? When working class wages are up like they are now that’s not really on the table, again I don’t see how the robust economy has any downward pricing pressure on wine.
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Wine is suffering from the same issue as TV. There are so many choices (including not watching/drinking) that things get segmented down to a point that it’s hard for any to survive without some serious backing.
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Setting aside how out of touch this is with real incomes as that is for another forum, the same people who could buy Tig and Dom in the recent past are the same people who can now. The people getting marginal bumps to their minimum wages have not been thrust into that bracket.
Wine is cyclical. Like many other things. The last time wine businesses had a downturn we saw the exact same sort of hand-wringing we are now. There is simply too much wine, too highly priced in comparison to demand. Correction engaged. Its only a matter of how deep and how wide now.
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I don’t disagree with any of this. Was just making the point that people in the lower income brackets have actually seen gains.
Here we saw a slow down in late Jan, Feb. A raft of interest rate rises, higher energy costs, general inflation meant average bottle price dropped. However we have seen a strong recovery since early March average bottle prices are at all time highs for us. Our customers in general are older, don’t have mortgages and are more affluent than the average so are insulated to interest rate rises, and indeed benefit from higher rates.
What I do think is that the very top end is very difficult, and there’s a lot of wine that I simply think represent very poor value. The market will shake these out no doubt, but I am not paying $100 plus wholesale for Languedoc reds or $1800 wholesale for non-top tier Chevalier Montrachet, and neither will my customers.
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It doesn’t seem like the strong economy is helping wine sales, at least not enough to offset the other challenges.