WHY are some wines more expensive than others?

It’s a question I’m often asked as a Wine Educator. Most consumers simply find anything more than 6 or 7 pounds retail not worth paying - ‘It’s all wine, paying more is just a con for idiots and snobs.’

While there is always some element of some regions and wines being more famed or rare than others, with market forces frequently dictating high prices, up to a certain point—you do get better quality wine for your money.

First of all, an inescapable fact—taxes. In the UK, alcohol duty on wine is based on the %abv of the liquid in the bottle, not the value. This is a set amount based on the banding. It is currently £2.67 for those that are 11.5–14.5% abv, which is most still wines. Then you have 20% VAT of the retail value on top of that too. A bottle of wine at £4.99, this is 83 pence. This means a bottle of wine retailing at £4.99 is a whopping £3.50 of taxes (or 70% of the bottle price!).

Once you factor in retail margin and production costs, you can be getting as little as 20-30 pence worth of wine. This leaves very little room to manoeuvre with quality, and the producer will be making wine at volume and encouraging vines to produce as many bunches of grapes as possible. (It takes around 600 grapes to make one bottle of wine, so that’s a lot of bunches!). The wine will therefore be made from grapes from a very large geographic area, with bunches of mixed quality fruit (some unripe, some just ripe and some ripe). Unfortunately, this is not a recipe for exciting, great tasting wine and the fruit will show very little of the characteristics of where it is grown, will be fairly simple tasting, quite thin textured and have a very short finish.

As duty is a fixed cost, paying a bit more for your bottle of wine reduces this significantly. £10-20 means tax drops to £4.34-6 per bottle (43-30% of the price). Despite the VAT value increase, duty remains a fixed price, so this will decrease further if you go beyond this too. At this point however, it becomes more of a case of can you afford it and what others are willing to pay for it. In my view though, it’s always more rewarding to ‘buy less, but buy better.’

A higher bottle price also allows smaller producers a fighting chance to make a wine of reasonable quality. They can be more selective of the bunch quality, rather than just ‘chucking everything in,’ leave the grapes on the vine to ripen longer if weather allows—building up more flavour and adding depth and complexity. The fruit can often come from smaller individual vineyards more expressive of their ‘terroir.’ In the winemaking, you’re more likely to see use of oak barrel maturation and cellar ageing—developing extra dimensions from sweet spice and tertiary flavours of age like dried fruit, smoke, meat, tobacco and ‘forest floor.’ 

Time is money, and the only way to develop tertiary flavours is to be patient and let that bottle age—if you’re a fan of those aromas.

All these are things that a winemaker simply can’t do for a bottle that is sold for a few quid.

This article was written by John Callow, a seasoned hospitality professional with extensive experience in wine selection, pairing, and industry trends. John is also the founder of The Northern Wine School, where he shares his expertise through wine education and tasting events. Find out more here 

https://www.northernwineschool.co.uk/