Why is Port so cheap?

WINE TALK
1

Just got an e mail from an English company with listings for the 2009 vintage. Taylor and Fonseca 200 pounds and 195 pounds respectively for a 6 pack. Translates to around $60 a bottle. Can’t think any major wine region where the release price for a relatively limited production best wine is that low.

Also, I am not sure why Port is proving to be such a difficult sell, or why there is still so much older wines on the market. It seems that there is a glut of unsold Port, which is really strange, considering the Port houses limit the amount of wine that becomes vintage to relatively small quantities, and only declare true vintage three and sometimes four times a decade.

2

Why is Sherry so cheap? In both cases, they’re not viewed as stylish wines, for whatever reason.

There was a bubble in Port about 20 years ago or so, and then prices crashed, and I think they’ve never really recovered.

3

Because it’s a specialty drink. Whereas reds and whites are drunk with food or sitting on the porch, etc. sweet wines of both colors are seen as something you might have a glass of after a special dinner. Maybe Sunday dinner, but almost never after burgers on Wednesday night. Sauternes is like this too. Champagne suffers from the same marginalization (plus it needs to be drunk that night if you want the bubbles and many of us don’t drink a full bottle at a time).

So you have relatively low demand and relatively high supply. Ergo, inexpensive relative to quality.

4

I imagine many wine drinkers only drink Port a few times a year. I like Port and it’s been well over a year since I’ve had any myself. Also, how many people are in a position to buy wine that needs another 40 years before drinking?

5

To me, the flipside of the question is “why do sweet wines always get such high scores?” It seems as though the scoring scale for Port, Sauternes, Rielsing, Tokaji, etc. starts at 90 for average stuff and goes up quickly from there with all the major critics.

You notice that sweet wines are ones that wine enthusiasts most frequently perceive to be weirdly underpriced, yet I think half of it is just that critics give sweet wines such high scores, which tends to make you think think “why do these 93 point Mosel rieslings only cost $20 and 93 point Sauternes only cost $40 when a 93 point Burgundy or Napa cab costs $120?”

I think that’s the other half of the equation in considering why sweet wines often seem underpriced.

I think Rick and Keith are correct as to the actual pricing, which is just supply and demand. I think when you get below the level of the devoted wine enthusiast types, there just isn’t much demand for sweet wines, and even the people (like myself) who like them tend only to buy and drink it infrequently.

6

Because only Roy and Andy drink it. [wink.gif]

7

All good points - it’s a speciality drink, low demand, very long-term committment in buying a recent vintage.

The flip-side is, I think the price is squeezed at the bottom end as well. I buy inexpensive (<$20) still/dry reds & whites for everyday drinking, but I haven’t found any Port under $20 that I’d even describe as drinkable.

8

With all the CA Cabernets that Parker has described as “port-like,” who needs to buy actual Port? [snort.gif]

Clearly, there is relatively little demand for Port. At least where I am, I only see people bring it out when they think the weather is cold/rainy, so there’s several months where no one seems motivated to drink Port.

Bruce

9

While sherry is in general still cheap here for what it is many cost three or four times as much as they did a decade ago and I can think of one(Valdespino Coliseo, a great though functionally undrinkable wine) that costs ten times as much. I think they are increasingly seen as stylish wines, which they most certainly are. It needs a Falstaffian constitution to indulge regularly and in quantity though, which is the simple problem with Port. The advent of widespread central heating dealt Port a blow from which it will never recover.

10

Excellent point, Tom, and one can add tougher drunk driving standards, too. People a generation older than me tell me that the standard at their dinners in the Bay Area in the 1960s and 1970s was one bottle per person plus a bottle each of Sauternes and Port for the table. No way one can do that today if guests will be driving home, and it is further exacerbated by higher alcohols in the great majority of wines.

11

Very well put. A few years ago, I started buying Ports and Sauternes with a vigor. I can’t remember the last time I’ve opened a bottle of either.

12

Rick – if this is your only concern, go ahead and open the bottles. Sugar is an incredible preservative and opened bottles will be good weeks, if not months, after you initially open them.

13

[deleted double post]

14

The thing these days that usually prompts me to dip into my small stash of Port is when I need some for a recipe (port reduction sauce for duck breast or somesuch), then I’ll nurse the rest of the bottle over the following week. There does seem to be a great deal of inertia when it comes to affirmatively going and opening a 750 of a dessert-style wine.

15

  1. The Chinese don’t like it

  2. SHHHHHHHHH!!!

16

Oh I know… the full bottle comment was more about the Champagne. I don’t care for Champagne without the bubbles and usually use it as a starter… so unless I’ve got 6+ people in the party, a 750 of it is too much. I really need to grab some 375s.

17

All things considered, I think Port is fairly priced. I probably open a bottle a month, certainly not much more, and always wish I had more mature bottles in the cellar. Until a few years ago, I think older Madeira was such a bargain that I focused on it more than port. Currently, I suspect Sherry is an excellent bargain, but I’m still learning about it and working on determining my own favorites.

The larger problem, of course, is that so many other regions are priced ridiculously… :stuck_out_tongue:

Cheers!

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  • Frank [cheers.gif]
18

So many things to say here…

  • Port and German Riesling are distinctly different wines and really don’t belong in the same category or even the same discussion.

  • I can assure you that there are plenty of people who make judgments about the quality of wines based on how they taste to them and not because of what number a critic gives to them. There are plenty of world class wines that don’t cost alot because they are not sought after. German Rieslings used to be the most expensive and sought after wines on the planet. Now they are very much out of fashion so there is less demand. A wine is either expensive or cheap relative to how much it costs and how much a particular person likes the wine.

  • Arguably the best Rieslings (dessert wines) are actually incredibly expensive. They can cost well over a thousand dollars.

  • There are dry wines that get high scores but don’t cost alot (Beaujolais and many Loire wines for example) so I think you are drawning a false correlation anyway

19

I thought for vintage port that most houses will not declare one if they have less than 10,000 cases. So VP is not a scare or limited production. I have collected VP since the 1960s. Starting in the the 1990s it has become harder and harder to find folks who want to drink a VP after dinner. Part is because of the high alcohol, but a bigger issue is the residual sugar and concerns about calories. I guess that is why those folks can see their toes and I cannot. Also my wife does not want to do a VP after dinner for less than 8.

20

Berry, I wasn’t accusing you or anyone of judging wines on the scores instead of their tastes, but I think the very high scores that critics seem to give to sweet wines play into our perception of how these wines seem so oddly underpriced.

Does that seem so far fetched? Does it seem like a coincidence that the major wine categories that seem to have the lowest cost relative to critics’ scores are probably Port, Riesling and Sauternes (speaking broadly, and of course there are outlying exceptions)?

None of that should give offense to anyone, it’s just an observation in partial response to the question posed, “why is Port so cheap?” “Cheap,” in the manner used in that question, is relative to the perceived value of the wine (Port is clearly not a “cheap” category of wine when you consider only the price itself), and I think one component of the perceived value of the wine is the high scores they generally get.

At a quick glance at a local store here, Wine Exchange in Orange, they have 2007 Graham’s sitting on the shelf for $69.99. Is that cheap? No, but when you consider it is WA 97 and WS 96, I think it starts to seem that way. How much would a Burgundy, Bordeaux, Napa Cab, California pinot, etc. cost at retail if it got WA 97 and WS 96?

Wine Exchange has 2009 Doisy Daene (WA 96-98) for $42.99 for a 750 ml. They recently sold SELBACH OSTER 2009 ZELTINGER SCHLOSSBERG RIESLING SPATLESE (WS 93 WA 92) for $19.99 (and I bought several). It’s purely subjective whether you think those wines are worth more or less money than that to you personally, and it doesn’t make you a “points whore” to think that they are bargains, but I think most of us probably have a tendency to perceive wines like these to be underpriced when we see the price in relation to the critical scores. You certainly can’t find most other categories of wines easily available with no hurry at major wine shops with those combinations of prices and major critics’ scores.