How much does cheap wine cost?

Tom Johnson at the Louisville Juice blog asked that question last week, and was nice enough to quote the Wine Curmudgeon in his post. Tom's point is that the cost to buy quality cheap wine has increased, and that there isn't that much good $10 wine anymore. He points to a couple of the leading wine blogs that offer $15 and $20 as cutoffs, says he uses $17 as the dividing line, and even notes that I'm writing about more $20 than ever before.

I have been pondering this since Tom's post ran, and I think I'll stick to my $10 price point. There is still plenty of wonderful wine at that price, as Robin Goldstein and I discussed when the second edition of The Wine Trials was released. That hasn't changed. What has changed is that there is more cheap wine than ever before, much of which is very ordinary, and which has overshadowed the quality $10 wine that is available. More, after the jump:

There is a glut of ordinary cheap wine for two reasons:

First, lots and lots and lots of grapes made into cheap wine -- not just from the California grape glut this decade, but from Australia (and, to a lesser extent, Spain, Chile and Argentina). These are wines that, for the most part, had not existed. In the early '90s, if you wanted to buy cheap wine, you bought it from France or from California in jugs. Shiraz with a cute label was unknown, but today, Yellow Tail sells around 8 million cases in the U.S.

In fact, the French have been mostly pushed out of the cheap wine market and there are so many cheap California wines that it's sometimes difficult to believe. Barefoot, for example, has used Gallo's marketing muscle and savvy to become one of the top 10 brands in the country.

Which leads to the second point: The proliferation of companies focusing on cheap wine, like Bronco, which does Two Buck Chuck; The Wine Company; and Three Thieves. They have taken advantage of the oversupply of grapes and used modern marketing techniques (something else that didn't exist in the wine business 20 years ago) to sell wine. Gallo's marketing for Barefoot is an excellent example. It focuses on lifestyle without much wine snobbiness, and price is rarely mentioned. That's almost unheard of in the wine business.

So keep looking for great $10 wine. It's out there. It's just more difficult to find it, because there are so many other $10 wines on the shelf to sort through.

$10 wine, cheap wine, wine sales, wine prices

Comments

[Tom Johnson]

One of the interesting things that came out of that discussion was a comment from a wine retailer who said that his "cheap wine" line has actually lowered, from $10 to $8.99 to even cheaper than that. He believes that there are cheap wines that are getting even better -- though like you he says you've got to look around.

He said, "Drink a bottle of Harlow Ridge Cab $6.99 and your expectations for what you get out of $15 wine will go up."

I, personally, think that the wine we get today is across-the-board better than were even elite wines a century ago. Scientific vineyard management and winemaking may have removed some of the individual character from wines, but it has also removed a lot of the fungus and bacteria. Also, shipping and warehousing are more trustworthy today than ever before.

My personal find of the last few months is Tilia Malbec, which can be had around Kentucky for $9 a bottle and in other, less tax-intensive states for as little as $7.

[Jeff Siegel]

There is no dobut that wine at all prices, and especially at $10 and less, is much better made than it used to be. To use Barefoot as an example again -- all of the wines are technically correct (the fruit is ripe, the winemaking is professional, etc.) in a way that a similarly priced wine 20 years ago often wasn't.

But that's also part of the problem. If it's so much easier to make competent $10 wine (and the companies know how to market them), who is going to go the extra mile and make a great $10 wine? Fewer and fewer companies.

[Beth Scott]

What a wonderful post, beautifully written. It captures these wines so well. Keep posting. Chris Colonialgifts.co.uk

[Tyce Walters]

I agree wholeheartedly - wade through enough perfectly-acceptable grape juice and you'll eventually find wines that are delicious, surprising, and even have a sense of place. In the last Wine Trials, we had particular luck with Portugal, which is hardly surprising. But the sheer volume of mediocre wine can be dispiriting: tasting twenty wines blind without finding more than one or two you'd enthusiastically serve to a friend can make you consider switching to beer. Guess it makes the great finds easier to appreciate?

[Jeff Siegel]

That's exactly correct -- I taste a lot of underwhelming cheap wine, and there seem to be many more underwhelming cheap wines since the recession started and the industry turned its foucs for $15+ to $8-10 wines. But that's what I'm here for -- to wade through all those wines.