It appears to me that high end wine is getting its ass kicked by beer, whiskey and bourbon
I love all of them, a great bottle of wine is $100 but that buys 5 great beer bombers or a 18 year old scotch !!
Goto the Napa cults and they are really poor value, Bond etc at $500 !! thats 3 cases of great beer bombers or 2 bottles of a great 25 year old scotch or 5 bottles of George T stagg, no way the wine wins.
I am seeing prices soften for non millionaire type stuff, i think this is a direct result of the great number of good options now available
For me, whiskey and beer will never compete with wine because I don’t use them in the same way. Whiskey is not something I think of as a part of a meal. Wine is (at least to me). Beer, while it can be part of a meal, doesn’t much appeal to me because it is often too heavy (texture/filling wise). Moreover, I find most beers to be far more limited in their pairing capabilities – at least for the foods that I like – than wine. Accordingly, I just don’t see any competition/comparison between wine and whiskey and beer – other than the alcohol contained in each.
I drink tea every morning. Dad didn’t drink coffee so we rarely had it in the house. Once in a while I buy some coffee, but not often. Tea’s a pretty good value - you can get a month or two worth of a nice Darjeeling for the price of a bottle of wine.
Sometimes I drink various juices from the Chaldean store - blueberry, blackberry, sour cherry.
And I drink wine.
Don’t drink beer, spirits, soda, etc. So in terms of value, for me anyway, it’s relative to nothing, because it’s sui generis.
But if you compare collecting high end wine to other luxuries superrich people spend money on - it’s probably the cheapest obsession by far.
Just think of art, watches, houses, yachts etc…
Maybe this helps explain the dichotomy in wine pricing in the last decade.
It makes no sense to be talking about value if you are only concerned with the high end which is never about value. Some high end product may still be good QPR but value resides are lower price points. When it comes to value in wine, I am finding more these days than years past. I think my average per bottle price is actually falling as I find more under the radar labels and take more advantage of flash sites and LWS pricing wine to move. If I had to guess, I would say that 80% of what I bought the past 12 months is under $50/btl and probably a full 66% is under $35/blt. I own more under $20 bottles now than I did 20 years ago. Yet, I find that I like the wines better than when I was loading up on the same wines everyone talks about.
Value in wine still exists but it takes some effort.
Agree. I slowed down my consumption of wine for a period of time 10-15 yrs ago because it was getting too expensive to drink on a regular basis. Now, I can find wines that I really like at a much lower price point. I think with other areas around the world continuing to develop their wine trade, this trend will continue. I hope so anyway.
I agree with this. Wine doesn’t have to be poor value as a beverage, though it certainly can be. Stop chasing cults and trophies and wine becomes a very manageable luxury. It seems to me that $100 shouldn’t be your wine baseline unless you make enough not to care about the relative value.
As for the comparisons: I like whiskey, but think it is best as an occasional indulgence. Even so, whiskey (and whisky) prices have risen quite a lot, and in many cases you are getting far, far inferior product to what you were getting a short while ago. And while world whisk(e)y stock declines continue to cause price increases until and unless production/aging catches up, there is a vast wealth of lovely and affordable wines. If one becomes too expensive it’s best to just sigh and move on to the next best thing. As for beer I like it, and most of my contemporaries vastly prefer geeky beer than wine, but for me it just doesn’t tick the same boxes. I think it’s the acidity in wine that makes me reach for wine much more often. Beer seems a heavy beverage in comparison, and doesn’t pair well with lots of foods IMO. So for me, wine is the better choice, and these other options are poor substitutes, though I like each at times.
I think of wines more like an event… So if a wine is stunning and in good company, I’d say it’s value is more equal/comparable to a trip to 6 flags or a baseball game. And the chances of it being an off bottle will be smaller than your team losing (burgundy excluded, of course).
It’s just too different categorically to compare with beer or spirits, which are (IMO) more of a means for a buzz with different levels of tastiness.
In the end, it’s just a good time that you flush down the toilette a few hours later, so it makes little sense to compare the CONSUMPTION of wine with other types of luxury items-buying and selling within a collection is, of course, a different story with uncorrelated returns like other high end collectibles
I drink tea every morning. Dad didn’t drink coffee so we rarely had it in the house. Once in a while I buy some coffee, but not often. Tea’s a pretty good value - you can get a month or two worth of a nice Darjeeling for the price of a bottle of wine.
Sometimes I drink various juices from the Chaldean store - blueberry, blackberry, sour cherry.
And I drink wine.
Don’t drink beer, spirits, soda, etc. So in terms of value, for me anyway, it’s relative to nothing, because it’s sui generis.
Describes me quite closely Greg , the only difference is that my tea of choice is Scottish Black Caramel Puerh tea , and it is like rocket fuel…to me very close to coffee in caffeine levels
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