Shared below is a quick, high-level synopsis of some of the cost factors that go into a bottle of wine. The basic difference between higher priced wines and daily quaffers includes the grape sourcing/quality, and winemaking techniques and facilities that create and nurture the wine, along with a healthy dose of marketing and possibly some market scarcity.
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Behind the price tag
There are lots of factors that go into the cost of a bottle of wine
Ben MacPhee-Sigurdson, Winnipeg Free Press
11/04/2009
Just like cars, frying pans or running shoes, there are wines in all sorts of price ranges — from the head-scratchingly cheap to the frighteningly expensive. So why does one wine cost $12 when another costs $120?
In most cases it’s impossible to single out one factor that makes a wine expensive, so let’s start from the beginning.
Hand-picked clusters of grapes from the best vineyards are usually the base ingredient for pricier wines — and the hand-pickers have got to be paid. New, pricey French or American oak barrels are often used in the fermentation or aging process, rather than large stainless steel vats. Then you have to sit on your asset — pricier wines are usually aged longer than entry-level wines, often sitting in barrels for two years or longer.
Pricier wines tend to be made in small quantities — often hundreds of cases (rather than thousands or more) are produced. Limited production is often the result of using select parcels of grapes from premium vineyards, but can also be driven by the almighty dollar — scarcity can drive easily drive up the price. Many “cult” wines from California that have received critical praise (more on this later) are made in extremely small quantities and are only available to those on their mailing list — and the wait to get on the list can be years.
Some wines are made in smaller quantity by necessity — ice wine, for example, requires more grapes just to make the 375-ml bottle size. Because most of the water in the grape is frozen, the concentrated nectar is all that remains. Similarly, grapes destined for Italy’s big, burly Amarone wines are dried on bamboo racks before being crushed, meaning the grapes shrivel to a raisiny state. Like ice wine, more grapes are needed to produce Amarone (which, once fermented, is typically aged in oak for around three years).
Then there’s reputation — if a wine receives high praise from influential critics like Robert Parker or Wine Spectator magazine, the price of the wine is likely to climb, and fast. Wines that receive higher than 93-ish points on the 100-point scales used by both Parker and Wine Spectator rarely cost less than $50. Sadly, one good score is all it takes for a wine’s price to jump permanently — subsequent vintages can be plonk, but the price will rarely come back down.
So while some higher-priced wines require more labour, hands-on care and are necessarily made in smaller quantities, others are priced higher based on one or two good vintages (and reviews), and purposefully made scarce so as to keep demand (and price) high. Unfortunately, it’s impossible to tell by looking at a bottle which case you have on your hands.
