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Sky-High Wine Prices
As the boom of the 1990s pushed bottle costs to record heights, California wines challenged France for world price dominance, with Italy close behind
Posted: December 18, 2002
Nothing in the wine world unites people quite like complaints about high prices. Consumers are mad at restaurateurs. Retailers blame producers. Vintners grouse about high grape costs. That growing demand for fine wine spurs higher prices is beside the point: Many take the rising cost of their favorite bottle of wine personally. Sticker shock intensified in the 1990s, when prices for top red wines throughout the world, most notably Cabernet Sauvignons and Cab-based blends from California, doubled and more than tripled in some cases.
In the articles that follow, Wine Spectator editors and writers take an in-depth look at the state of wine prices today. First, we focus on California's priciest wines: how they got there and where they are going; then we calculate what it actually costs to make a bottle of wine; finally, we survey trends in restaurant pricing, where prices are highest and generate the most frustration.
