Are "Value" Wines Better Values

“A cynic is a man who knows the price of everything, and the value of nothing.” ― Oscar Wilde

Wine and Wilde

Once upon a time, while leaning behind the counter of my liquor store in New York City on a quiet summer’s afternoon, I engaged in a lively discussion with a little old lady with a very colorful hat, about the Gallo wine classic, Night Train.

Well, wine-like beverage I suppose, since they add grape juice to jack up the sugar.

The little old lady allowed how “wine was wine,” and at a $1/bottle (flask actually), it was the best wine value in the store. ThunderBird at the time was about the same cost but I didn’t carry it. Besides, it made your hands smell like gasoline.

They were the highest selling wines in the U.S. at one time.

What the lady lacked in logic she made up for in passion. She was a very sincere lady. I suspect she had been partaking of that self same value wine just before she came in. She paid $1 in cash so I never got her name.

In the end, I gave in and told her she was right, after asking her if she knew what street she was on, and to be careful going home, since her knowledge of urban geography was shaky at best.

Would that I could say that was the only time I had that discussion, usually beginning with the phrase “this wine is too expensive” and/or “no wine is worth that much.” But alas, it was the background music to the rest of my life.

It happened in all kinds of tastings, including black tie dinners and summer concerts and in all manner of places.

The problem here, is that people think the cost of a wine is an indication of its value, ie. how good it is/ dollar spent. And, they have no idea how to evaluate wine when it’s not based on price.

Fortunately, I am here to demonstrate why “super value” wines ($5/bottle at Target) are not value at all. And, why if you’re looking for value in your wines, quality per bottle as it were, then you’ve got to look in a different direction.

I was once in the possession of a partner out in the Central Valley of downtown California, who swore as often as possible, to any near-animate object available that if you paid more than $10/bottle for wine you were getting cheated.

It was a great quote, it got reprinted everywhere including the New York Times.

It just wasn’t true. Did I mention that at the time he didn’t sell any wines over $10?

A good portion of under $10 “value,” “super-value” and “extreme value” wines are made from the green Thompson Seedless Grape grown in the Central Valley which in truth, makes a better grape jelly than it does a wine.

Thompson Seedless have thick skins and no real flavor but they ripen up to two months earlier than real wines in real growing regions and in quantities that would fill the Colosseum in Rome.

The Thompson Seedless grape most likely came from Turkey. Since it’s so popular in “value” wines, some scoundrel who will remain nameless, researched the Turkish name, filed it with the US Government as a different wine and charged $2/bottle more for it.

It was a big success.

My point here is that you need to think a little bit to actually figure the value of a wine at any given price.

The Price of Greatness

Wine grapes can vary from a price per ton say of $1,000-$8,000 or more. But, how much of that cost (and attendant quality) end up in your bottle?

The cost of packaging for all wines is about the same —that’s for stuff like glass, cardboard, corks, capsules, etc. Expensive wines pay a little more for those same things but overall they function as a fixed cost—i.e. whether you buy a $200/bottle wine or a $2.00/wine bottle, the cost (measured in dollars) of putting them in bottles, cardboard boxes, corks, etc. are about the same.

This is the first mistake value people make.

Also, distance matters. Freight costs are more of the price of a bottle depending on how far away you are from where the grapes are grown. If you buy California wines in New York or Miami, they are generally a $2/ 750 ml bottle or so higher than they are in California. It varies with a bunch of different factors but $2-$3 is a decent rule of thumb.

Did your mind perchance leap just now to London, or Rome, or Sidney? Yes, dear reader, those are more fixed costs—freight is the same for everybody. Freight makes bottles a lot more expensive.

If you’re thinking St. Thomas or the Bahamas are closer, it turns out that they are even more expensive. Freight is part of it, but local taxes on alcohol can make $6 value wines cost $20/bottle in those kinds of places. At a normal restaurant markup, your $6 bottle of wine can cost $50/bottle on a list in a vacation wonderland.

The difference in $200 bottles and $2 bottles is 1) the much higher cost of the grapes per ton (or gallon) for $200 bottles —which means much higher quality wine and 2) reputation.

In my infinite restraint, I am not listing arrogance or ego as fixed costs, but sometimes the winery owner thinks the price equals the quality so they will raise their bottle costs just to make you think it’s high quality.

That usually results in a high price, low value wine which makes people say things like, “no wine is worth that,” as noted above.

Vacation Resorts are not the place to look for value wines. Not all the sharks are in the water.

Premium and Super premium: Wine or Gasoline?

Classifications in the wine industry are dubious at best. Just like the title of this section says—you can’t actually tell if “Premium” and “Super Premium” mean wine or gasoline. Although, it’s easier to figure out what a premium gasoline is than what a premium wine is.

Here are a couple of thing you might want to consider when looking for the best value in wine (you’re on your own with gasoline):

Wine Folly classifies wines that cost under $4.00 per bottle as “extreme value wines.” https://winefolly.com/lifestyle/reality-of-wine-prices-what-you-get-for-what-you-spend/

Hmmm. Really?

Vinepair says Target classifies its $5.00 bottle wine as “super value wines.” (https://www.target.com/p/moscato-white-wine-750ml-bottle-california-roots-8482/-/A-52525401#lnk=sametab)

So, what do you think? Is that true?

Is $5 wine a better value than $25 wine?

It’s cheaper, but is it a better value? Where do you get the most bang for your buck?

I couldn’t find reliable numbers for the U.S. but according to Business Insider the average cost of a bottle of wine in a U.K. grocery store is 5.59 pounds sterling ($6.78 U.S. Dollars). That $6.78 is right in the range of average wine cost in U.S. groceries too which is roughly $6-8.

The thing is, in a $6.78 bottle of wine, you get only 68 cents worth of wine. All the rest of the cost is packaging, distribution and taxes. Is that value?

You can see from the chart below that at $13/bottle you get $3.59 worth of wine/bottle and at $26/bottle you get $9.62 worth of wine/bottle—37% of the bottle price vs 10% of the bottle price for “value wines.”

Shelf Price Wine Cost/bottle % wine is of bottle price

$6.78 (5.49 sterling) 68 cents (60 p) 10.0 % cost of wine in the bottle

$13.00 (10.0 sterling) $3.59 (2.76) 27.60 % cost of wine in the bottle

$26.00 (20.00 sterling) $9.62 (7.40) 37.0 % cost of wine in the bottle

So, which is it, O Ye Seekers of value in wine?

Do you want to buy wine or cardboard?

The Value of Value

If in fact that little old lady back in New York couldn’t tell the difference in Night Train and Lafite, then she was right. No reason for her to go higher than $1. That’s fine for her.

If that $5 Target Super Value Wine tastes great to you—no problem. The point is to enjoy not to judge.

But, if you are in search of enological greatness, that’s probably not the way to go. It behooves you to pay attention to the variables in the system.

All that assumes of course, that you can afford the price of the wine in the first place.

There’s no value at all in a wine you can’t afford to buy.

So, if you are thinking value, it might pay to think through it a little more.

Exactly how much of that price is wine?

Just sayin’.