Update: Wine prices 2023, part 3

Yes, it looks like some wine prices are falling

Finally, after years of waiting, it looks like wine prices are starting to go down. The not so good news is that it’s in lower priced, supermarket-style wines that cost less than $10. Wines in the $10 to $15 range still – stubbornly – seem to be holding their prices.

The pictures at the top of the top of the post, from Total Wine in Dallas, tell the story. What Total is charging, and even allowing for Total’s lower than most margins, doesn’t cover the cost of making the wines – maybe the glass for the bottles, but not the grapes, labor, or shipping to the U.S.

And why is that? Because warehouses are full of these kinds of wines, the less than $10 brands that have been especially pummeled by the slump in wine demand. So sell them as cheap as necessary to move them, since all they’re doing otherwise is taking up expensive warehouse space.

I’ve spent the past week talking to grape brokers, wine analysts, retailers, and the like for a freelance piece about all of the grapes, bulk wine, and bottled wine around the world – and, yes, in the U.S. — languishing unsold. The irony? I’ve been told that some expensive wines, including those $100 and up, aren’t selling, Which, of course, isn’t supposed to happen any more.

Demand is so flat, one high-end producer told me, that he isn’t going to raise prices this year – and might even cut a price or two. Not only didn’t his cost of grapes increase, but his other costs, like bottles, seems to have stabilized.

So when will prices for those $10 to $15 wines that we focus on the on the blog start to fall? Hopefully, sooner than we realize.