Wine Pricing and Making an Educated Guess

No, you do not have to spend crazy amounts of money to consistently drink good to great wine. There. Now that we’ve got that misnomer settled, I’ll explain in some very basic terms why and how you can do a better job at picking wine you are likely going to love more often. I am not addressing old vintages here. We’re just talking about current release wines, which means within the range of five years of today’s date. I’ll dive deeper into old wines another time. For now, I just want to give you some basic guidelines when shopping for your next bottle. 

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Let’s start with the surprise swirling around underneath every cork or screw top. This is one of my favorite aspects of wine and my own personal journey consuming and learning about it. Like I mentioned in my first blog about good and bad wine, in order to learn more about wine and enjoy a wider variety of wine you simply have to accept that “you win some and you lose some”. This is the gamble worth taking as you explore more regions, varietals and vintages. The surprise you get every time you open a new bottle is part of the fun and the education. But, with some basic understanding of different wine regions and the average pricing of bottles from those places you will be able to make educated guesses on new wines and take away most of the risk that you are not going to like what is in the bottle. 

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With that said, here is my breakdown of wine pricing and what to expect from different price ranges. There are six key categories to understand.

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1. $5 and under

• Huge risk in this price range and let's face it, you rarely find anything in this range outside of a Trader Joe’s. If you’re buying in this arena you really need to already know what you’re looking for because you’ve tried so many terrible wines and narrowed it down to the few that are palatable. If this is your price point, you’ll have to do lots of experimenting, reading other people’s blogs who focus on TJ’s and asking around for advice to find something drinkable. 

2. $5 - $20

• This is also a tricky range, but the closer you get to $20 the more options you’ll have for quality wine. Some of my favorite go-to bottles for a casual night or to bring to a party of non-wine nerds is between $18 and $20 a bottle. Spending around that much gives you a much better chance at picking something you and your friends are going to enjoy. 

3. $20 - $40

• Now we’re getting somewhere. This is the range I always tell people to get comfortable with if they want to drink more wine and find ones that will truly represent the grape and region they come from. For some regions, this is actually the average price of some of the best being produced. Chile for instance. You can find insane Chilean Cabernet Sauvignon for under $30 and that tends to be the norm for current vintages. This is also a great range for you Rosé lovers out there. Walk into any wine shop and ask a salesperson to help you find a wine in this price range and they will have lots of great options for you from all over the world. 

4. $40 - $60

• This is the one. This price range is where you will at the very least be drinking high quality wines and most likely love them too. In terms of making educated guesses, staring at a shelf in a store or ordering online, if you are up to spending in this range you will rarely be disappointed by what you choose. Whether it is Santa Barbara County Pinot, Châteauneuf-du-Pape or a German dry Riesling you will be able to drink wines that truly represent the grape and terroir. 

5. $60 - $100

• I know. This is probably getting you far out of your comfort zone. $60 - $100 on a single bottle of wine? Five glasses? How can I justify this? It is a lot to ask of your bank account, especially on any regular, non special occasion basis. Also, depending on the wine region, this might be a complete rip off (hello Temecula). But, in many cases for most of the great wine regions of the world, spending this much allows you to access the very best these places have to offer in terms of current release or at times older vintages. If you are really just starting out, you may not be able to tell the difference between these higher priced wines and the ones in the previous price range. But, as you continue exploring wine and your palate changes, trust me you will and the cost will be worth it. Wines at this level are being produced with the best grapes a vineyard is growing, with the best care taken for quality, often they are aged longer adding to their complexity and they are what the winemaker feels best represents the effort and love they’ve put into their wine that vintage. 

6. $100 and above

• We’re getting into rarified air here. Obviously, there is a huge gap between a 2016 Heitz Cellar "Trailside Vineyard" Napa Cabernet Sauvignon at $149.95 and a 2019 Domaine de la Romanee-Conti Romanee-Conti Grand Cru for $30,299, but, I’m grouping all of these together for a few reasons. Once you get into this world of wine you start paying for things like scarcity, name recognition, marketing and access. Are these wines worth the crazy price tags? Depends who you are or who you’re talking to. I’ve had the often praised Opus One, which goes for around $400 for a current release. Was it the greatest wine of my life? Not by a long shot. Was it special and incredibly high quality? Yes, of course. The wines in this world of hundreds and thousands of dollars are all going to be special, but the cost has so much to do with how few are being produced, how small a plot of land they are harvesting grapes from (Romanee Conti is only 4.47 acres) and lots of other factors that have more to do with their marketing over the years than how much better their wine will taste compared to something more reasonably priced. If your goal is to enjoy wines that represent all of the great wine regions of the world, do not feel pressured to spend this much money. You are going to accomplish your goal with less. But, if you can afford it and want to dip your toe into this exclusive club of wine lovers to see how the other half lives, just be sure to invite me over when you open up the bottle. 

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