Wine prices 2024

Did the WC get it right last year?

This is the first of two parts looking at wine prices and wine trends in 2024. Part I: Wine prices 2024. Part II: Wine trends 2024.

So, in 2023, wine prices remain high. Wine sits on store shelves. Back vintages pile up. And, at some point, either later this year or early next, the fizzing and sputtering turns into an explosion and prices finally start to obey the law of supply and demand.

I wrote that a year ago, in the 2023 wine prices post. And you know what? I may have been correct. Prices did pretty much stay high — or go higher — for most of last year. And yes, wine sat on store shelves, waiting for buyers, while back vintages piled up (as almost every sales report confirmed).

And then, around the holidays, I saw some almost unprecedented discounting. Wine.com offered free shipping for almost a month, something it almost never does. My local Kroger offered not a 10 percent discount on a case during that period, but a 25 percent discount on six wines (and yes, I bought quite a bit of $8 vinho verde for $6).  Discounting elsewhere in town wasn’t quite that steep, but even retailers that don’t usually do much price cutting found a way to cut prices in the run-up to Christmas. How does $2 off a $15 wine for buying a mixed case sound?

Now, the caveats. Dallas may not be representative of the rest of the country. Wine.com’s free shipping may have been more about Wine.com than the wine business in general; I didn’t notice the same sort of discounting (though there was some) at other on-line retailers. But the Kroger discounting, to my mind, speaks volumes. That it sold the wine so cheaply means it paid less for it, which means its wholesalers had wine stacked up in warehouses that they needed to sell. So they made Kroger an offer it didn’t refuse, and I got lots of $6 wine. And it’s worth noting that it was sold out of the La Vieille Ferme rose, which was $6.75 a bottle with the discount. So, yes, wine was selling at lower prices.

Does this mean we’ll see “the fizzing and sputtering” from late last year turn into a price-cutting explosion sooner rather than later in 2024? As I have written many times, predicting wine pricing is not for the faint of heart. But maybe, just maybe, we’ll see that explosion this year.

Photo: Priscilla Du Preez, three men laughing while looking in the laptop inside room via Unsplash