Comments on: America’s minuscule high-end wine market

By: MarkTNorman

MarkTNorman — Thu, 24 Jan 2013 19:46:11 +0000

First of all, those of us who really understand this portion of the wine market knows that $20+ price category is disappearing from scan data…almost all of this is going DtC…over the 52 week period thatWine & Vines and ShipComplaint reported mid 2012 DtC sales were at $1.4 Billion…yes…that is with “b” amounting to 8.6% of all domestic wine sales.

By: Moopheus

Moopheus — Thu, 06 Sep 2012 21:40:14 +0000

A) You’re completely leaving out the restaurant sales, which is probably significant.

B) Who cares? Your complaint basically comes down to “Americans don’t spend their money on the stuff I spend my money on!”

C) I’d rather have a chocolate egg cream any day.

By: Moopheus

Moopheus — Thu, 06 Sep 2012 18:12:26 +0000

What is the point of this post? The US is still largely a beer-drinking country. I’d also make a guess that most of the more expensive wine in the US is sold in restaurants, and not for home consumption, which obviously won’t be included in Nielson figures. I’d also hazard a guess that most of the vodka ends up in mixed drinks. Or used to get drunk fast.

Personally, I only buy wine for cooking, which means that it is pointless to spend more than $10 for a bottle that’s going into a sauce or a risotto.

And in a country where 40 million people are on food stamps, few things say “pretentious a-hole” like wine snobbery.

By: Moopheus

Moopheus — Thu, 06 Sep 2012 14:57:11 +0000

Srsly, Felix? We’ve got 40 million people on food stamps and you’re complaining we’re not buying enough expensive wine? Geez, and I thought the Romney was out of touch. I mean, really, WTF is the point of this post?

By: Sam09

Sam09 — Wed, 05 Sep 2012 19:34:51 +0000

The figure of $410 million seems very low. This 2010 paper from two UCSF professors seems to have very different data on high-end wine. Figure 11 (on page 17) shows overall revenue from wines over $20 in the range of ~$5 billion.

http://academyofwinebusiness.com/wp-cont ent/uploads/2010/05/AnalyzingUSRetail.pd f

And this 2001 story from SF Gate notes the difficult in getting reliable data on high-end wine sales:
(http://www.sfgate.com/business/article/ Top-End-Wines-Resist-Recession-Premium-W ine-2962139.php)

“The problem with government data that is the source of many wine industry reports is that it lists how many gallons of wine from wineries and bonded warehouses are shipped and taxed, without revealing how much the wine costs per bottle.
Although grocery store scan data are useful, they primarily report wine sales below $12 per bottle and do not cover all geographic regions.
Other industries generally have more reliable data because they have fewer companies and more publicly held companies. In contrast, the wine industry is highly fragmented and generally run by families.”

By: PatrickS

PatrickS — Wed, 05 Sep 2012 18:19:54 +0000

By comparison, American craft beer, which is certainly NOT designed to be as bland and tasteless as possible, represents 15% of US beer sales, with $8.7 billion in retail sales.

http://www.brewersassociation.org/pages/ business-tools/craft-brewing-statistics/ facts

By: JustinCormack

JustinCormack — Wed, 05 Sep 2012 16:49:06 +0000

From a viewpoint back here in the UK, Californian wine is at the moment grossly overpriced, compared to say French wine. I know we pay more, and you pay less over there, but I am not sure it makes up for it. This has changed over the last 10-20 years, and I don’t think it is all currency movements. I don’t think the economics of wine in say Burgundy or Bordeaux (or Germany for that matter, one of my favourites) are much better, and I think they are cross subsidised.

(Note I dont include the high end stuff that is non price sensitive I mean the quality stuff at $20-$50)

By: JDow2

JDow2 — Wed, 05 Sep 2012 15:15:43 +0000

Given the median household income, how can you be surprised that the median household doesn’t buy $20 wine?

The added value of high-priced wine is an acquired taste anyway. Most people won’t drink enough of it to learn to value the difference.

By: Chris08

Chris08 — Wed, 05 Sep 2012 14:13:23 +0000

Just how does a “wine that is not very good” taste, Felix? Can you give us some objective criterion other than your subjective opinion? I have drunk (red) wines in Europe (Spain and Portugal mainly but also France) and the US and imports from Australia and Chile, etc., and concluded that almost all tasted perfectly okay if they cost over about $6 a bottle. (Below that one could tell something was amiss). Above $6 it was all subjective.

By: crocodilechuck

crocodilechuck — Wed, 05 Sep 2012 06:04:11 +0000

Felix

what’s happened to the erudite comments? they’re not visible upon clicking on the blog title to this piece…….

By: MyLord

MyLord — Wed, 05 Sep 2012 02:22:33 +0000

A huge amount of it isn’t very good?
I thought the results of all those taste tests were that nearly all did taste very good. You know, those that showed people could not even tell a red from a white blindfolded.

By: KenG_CA

KenG_CA — Tue, 04 Sep 2012 23:44:07 +0000

Felix, check your stats. At http://www.wineinstitute.org/resources/s tatistics/article639, they say California shipped about $20 billion of wine to the US market last year, in 212 Million cases. That’s an average of about $8/bottle, so if you figure 80% (2 billion bottles) of those cases averaged $5/bottle, then the remaining 20% averaged $20/bottle. If 80% of those 500M bottles averaged $15 each, then the 20% (100M bottles) above $15 averaged $60 each.

Don’t worry, there are lots of winos here with expensive (if not good) taste.