Higher Price, Better Bottle of Wine?

By Robert Sox
August 22, 2013 

You need a bottle of wine.  You go to the store and think, should I buy the $8 bottle or the $15, maybe the $20 bottle?  The in-laws are coming over so I better buy the $20 bottle.  That one must be a lot better.  Do you have this kind of internal conversation when you’re shopping for wine? 

We have all been led down that path of thinking higher price equals higher quality whether we’re talking about wine, clothes, or household appliances.  And of course, sometimes it’s true and sometimes it isn’t.  So how do you approach this when buying wine? 

Ideally, you’ve tasted a lot of wines and have a list of more expensive ones that you love and have judged worthy of the price and then you have your everyday $10 bottle list, wines that you know are good enough for a Tuesday night.  Unfortunately, not many of us are that organized.  You had a great wine at a restaurant recently but can’t remember the name so you end up at the store staring at labels and prices. 

There are so many qualifiers that it is hard to make definitive statements about whether paying more gets you a better bottle of wine.   Here’s my way of thinking about it.  At the very least, the wine/quality relationship is not linear.  The $12 bottle is not always better than the $11.  That is an easy one.  I think of it more in price blocks.  Wines that are in the less than $10 category stand an equal chance of being good, or bad.  When you jump up to about a $20 bottle, you should always expect something better than the $10 bottle.  At $25 to $50, all of the wines should be good, but I would be hard pressed to say that any one bottle in that range would be guaranteed to be better than another.  Somewhere around $50, though, is another jump in quality. 

I was in Napa Valley last summer and tasted a lot of wines.  The ones in the $50 retail range were so good that I came back and decided to expand the number of offerings in that range in my store.  From there, when the price gets up around $100/bottle, you start to get into wines that are collectable, wines that may need to be stored for several years before they reach their peak in taste.  Many of these, if you opened them now, would lose in a taste comparison with your $15.  You’re paying for the expected superior tasting experience that will come in five or ten years. 

Rather than navigate this all on your own, ask for help in the wine store.  Ask for a recommendation of the best $10 bottle or the best $20 bottle.  Pick some in a variety of price blocks and see what judgments you can make about the price/quality scale.  With everything I’ve said here, there are always exceptions.  We’re all thrilled when we taste a wine that over delivers for the price.  I always want to put a case of that one away, knowing that probably with the next vintage, after positive reviews and big demand, that wine will move up into the next price block.

Robert Sox
[email protected]

Native of Columbia, SC.  Returned to Columbia area in 2004 after being away for school and work for 25 years.  Undergraduate degree from Clemson and MBA from University of NC at Chapel Hill.  Owner of the independently owned Best Bottle Wine and Gifts in Shoppes at Woodhill since 1985. 

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