Why is the grape so much more inportant than the wine

WINE TALK
1

Sure this has been discussed before but id like to see what we can come up with.

Why is the grape so important to the cost and rating of a wine, the following are some general comments that hold true most of the time, why does it happen this way. Why is the wine quality not the driving factor

1 - Why is Cab Sauv always the most expensive wine in a winerys offering, does it cost significantly more to grow ? personally I don’t love Cab wines and prefer other varietals.

2 - My understanding is that Pinot Noir is a bitch to get right compared to Cab but again why does it sell cheaper that Cab ?

3 - In France the Pinot Noir makes the worlds most expensive wines, but not in US, why ?

3 - Why do we always attach lower commercial value to Zin, Mouvedre, Grenache ? yet in the US these grapes are producing spectacular wine. A top notch zin from Carlisle or Bedrock would be 95 points and $40 the same 95 points in a Cab is going to cost you $100 + I understand the commercial aspects of Napa valley and the cost of buying cab grapes if you don’t grow your own but if you do grow your own then why is the price higher

just a few points, any thoughts please add and we can play with this for a while

2

A large part is the cost of the land growing said grapes. Land prices are out of site in Napa, planted heavily to Cab.

3

Yeah but what about outside napa ?

Why are Napa Chards so much cheaper than Napa Cabs ?

4

Costs for vinification does not depend on the grape variety. There are other factors that has an effect on the costs like:

  • de-stemming yes/no
  • how long does the wine ages in barrel
  • barrel yes/no
  • new barrel vs used barrel
  • producer and range of barrel
    etc…

Cabernet Sauvignon is -in general- a very robust grape and it’s easy to work with…compared to Pinot Noir for example.

Although Merlot is not considered as a “top end grape” by the general public wine like Petrus and Masseto are (normally) 100% Merlot.

Burgundy Pinot Noir is much more expensive than most Cali Cabs

Italien Chardonnay is often a bargain wile White Burgundy wines can be horrible expensive.

Botton line: the grape dones not have a “real” effect on the wine prices and Cabernet cannot be considered as the top variety.

5

A question with potential for a thousand answers, none of which I suspect could answer it fully.

The wines that have made the region famous are more likely to command a premium than wines grown from other grapes. Indeed wineries are almost forced to follow the crowd and put the biggest vineyard and winery effort into the wine that is seen as most prestigious for that region. Napa Cabernet? Yes probably still the most prestigious combination in USA? Is it the best? That depends on your palate, but it is your palate rather than some other bloke’s ‘points’ you’ll want to make that decision on.

regards
Ian

6

This begs the question. The reason land prices are out of site in Napa is because cab planted there fetch a premium price.

Really, the reason these wines cost more is simply because the market has decided to pay more for them. The market is not always efficient, as you say, but that creates value segments for us consumers.

7

Market demand. Cabernet has achieved an exalted status in the minds of many wine buyers that Zin, grenache and syrah haven’t. I like syrah and own a decent amount of northern Rhones but in general I prefer the flavor profile of Pinot Noir and chardonnay most. I’ve tried to fall in love with Riesling but it doesn’t trip my trigger nor does it appeal to many other wine drinkers to the extent that Chardonnay does. If you love Riesling, Grenche, syrah and Zins you’re lucky because they’re a bargain if they’re you’re favorite wines. Put another way, I’m dam happy $100+ Napa Cabs aren’t my passion.

8

Whites should be cheaper to produce because there is less aging time, in most cases less oak used so you have less capital tied up to produce a bottle.

9

I don’t think that is really true in France when you consider prices for top Bordeaux or Northern Rhones these days.

Scarcity explains the French prices because the top wines come from small vineyards. There is nothing like that limitation on U.S. Pinot planting areas, and there aren’t small plots with hyper prestige as in France.

10

as i understand it - big scores aside - most pricing for variety is based on cost/ton. some growers even have minimum retail price parameters included in contracts.

so to the OP 1 & 2: Cab is [often] the most expensive offering due to high(er) tonnage price. PN in CA, isn’t priced as high, nor as widely planted, so the price can be considerably less.

of course, oak regimen and AVA plays a significant role when it comes to CA offerings.

11

supply and demand

12

That just begs the question, though-- why are the cab grapes more expensive? Perceived quality/demand seem to be the answer.

13

Somewhere, somehow, somebody put Cabernet Sauvignon on a pedestal and told the world that Cab is the wine of the gods. The sheep followed in line, religiously purchasing their WS or WA and chased the numbers. The astute businessmen bought up land and planted the god’s grape and sure enough, the sheep drove up the price through demand.

I wish I could find the article on the chemically produced cab with no grape content that won the gold medal in the late 80’s.

14

as i understand it - big scores aside - most pricing for variety is based on cost/ton. some growers even have minimum retail price parameters included in contracts.

Why would you think that price is based on cost? Is that true for anything else? That’s commodity pricing. Wine is a Veblen good. Cost has nothing to do with the price.

To respond to the OP - you’re looking at California. In France, the grape is not necessarily what drives cost. I believe that there’s more Merlot planted in Bordeaux than there is Cab. In some places it’s only a small percentage of the blend, in others it’s much of the blend. The reason people pay more for a grape in California has to do with history and marketing.

When the US industry was starting up again in the 1960s and even the 1970s, the US looked to France as the epitome of taste and class. Italy and Italian food and wine were pretty much disdained in most of the US. Pizza was just starting to become popular and there no Mario Batalis around.

There were always highly-regarded wines made in many parts of Europe but the Brits were next to France, they bought the stuff that as exported from there, and as they were the pre-eminent power in the world, they took those wines around with them. There’s a reason so many Bordeaux houses were and are owned by non-French people - the wine was always a creation of the marketers, not little romantic wine makers, and there was great money to be made in selling it. So it’s always been an attractive place to investors from around the world.

Especially after WWI and WWII, the producers in Spain and Portugal who had once been mainstays of the British wine trade were pretty much off the map, Germany, which produced the most expensive and revered wines, was a shamed and beaten opponent, and the Austro-Hungarian empire, which produced the wonderful sweet wines was no longer in existence. Italy produced a lot of peasant wine that nobody outside of the country cared for.

So French wine, particularly wine from Bordeaux, was considered the best and when the Americans looked for a standard, they looked to Bordeaux and France. Jefferson had written about Bordeaux, De Gaulle served it to Jackie Kennedy, and that was the wine to beat. What grapes were in the most prestigious? Why Cabernet Sauvignon. So the folks in California planted Cab Sauv and tried to make something like Bordeaux.

Remember that at the time there was probably more Carignan and Barbera and Charbono planted in CA than Cab. But all that stuff was all planted by old Italian peasant farmers or by big commercial outfits looking for high- producing varieties.

Mondavi and others taught Americans to buy by grape variety and certain varieties are considered “better” than others. Because of that, people will pay more for those wines. Look at notes on this forum - people have said that they prefer 100% Cab to any blend. There’s no reason on earth that a single variety can or should produce a better wine than a blend, but that’s not what people want to hear and if they’re willing to pay extra for a monovarietal, why not make it for them?

Napa can grow lots of things. I think it makes excellent Zinfandel for example. But if I were a grower and I could get five times as much per ton for Cab, I’d rip out the Zin and plant Cab. My cost might be the same, but my price wouldn’t be!

15

This ^

16

In a nutshell… [tease.gif]

Thanks for another dissertation Greg.

17

A good thread going here. Interesting discussion.

18

ummmmmm, ok.

19

^^^^^^^ This^^^^^^^

20

I have a friend who owns a winery and his prices are not set based on cost but rather what he thinks the market will pay for his wines. A $5000 btl of Romanee Conti probably cost in the neighborhood of $20 to make.