Resetting your price points

The old price points which went something like

• $5: basic wine, when you just want something called wine, can sometimes find good wines
  
• $10: might be able to get something good, but not likely. If you hunt, can find something very good.
  
• $20: if you know what to look for you can get something pretty nice and rarely something very good to excellent.
  
• $50: lots of very good wines and lots of not so very good wines are available, outstanding wines if you obsess and hunt for them
  
• $100: if you spend some effort, very good to outstanding wines.
• $100+: why the heck are you reading this blog anyways?

But two factors have conspired to lower these price points. One at least temporarily and the other somewhat profoundly.

First, we are in world wide economic slump, aka recession. And high-end wine being is a luxury item, takes a big hit. People who used to spend $15-35 are now spending half that. The market knows this and so prices have fallen. Apparently wines over $20 are in a no-man's land and don't really sell, unless there is well-established brand behind it. And during the boom, may insta-millionaires opted to open wineries and plant grapes and now they have to sell their product.

Second, the entire level of wine making has been raised with all these new energetic wine makers entering the market and all these new energetic countries entering the market. If the standard $10 wine is say an 84 points, and you are a new country with new wine makers and cheap land and labor, why you make a $10 wine that is 86 points. Let this news spread and pretty soon the whole world is making better wine. From 2002 to 2008, the tolerance for poorly made wine has pretty much disappeared from $10+ wines. All the big wine making operations are turning out clean wines without any obvious flaws, besides being somewhat "boring".

Say what you want, but all the low end Chilean and Australian wines are cleanly made. Even "Two Buck Chuck" is cleanly made, though not terribly interesting to my tastes. Granted these wines may not excite you, but a $3 wine today is much better on average than a $5 wine from ten years ago.

So what does this all mean? As a Wine Spectator score monger, I've noticed that if you know where and when to look, I'm seeing better than ever wines for lower price points. Such as numerous 92-93 points wines for under $25 and many wines hitting 94 or even 95 points for under $50. This was pretty much a rarity 4 years ago.

Case in point, I bought the 95 point Two Hands 2005 Bella's Garden for $60 at Costco a few years ago as this was one of the lowest priced wines at this score. Now I can find several 95 point Aussies at this same price. Second case in point, I'm seeing many 93-94 point California Syrahs and Chardonnays for under $40. This would have been unheard of 5 years ago.

And for the bargain shopper, $15 gets you some pretty decent wine these days. I've also gotten more into Chardonnay of late and the wonderful 2007 Calif vintage is producing some very nice ones at high production levels.

To summarize, the new price points go something like

• $5: basic wine, when you just want something called wine, can sometimes find good wines
  
• $10: can get something decent if it is the right varietal or the right country might be able to get something good, but not likely. If you hunt, can find something very good.
  
• $20: if you know what to look for you can get something pretty nice and rarely something numerous oppurtunities abound to get very good to excellent wines
  
• $50: lots of very good wines and lots of not so very good wines are available, outstanding wines if you obsess and hunt for them
  
• $100: if you spend some effort, very good to outstanding wines.
• $100+: why the heck are you reading this blog anyways?