What makes some wines so expensive?

Considering it’s all just 750ml of fermented grape juice in a glass bottle with a paper label on it, the price variation between wines is huge. Even within the same varietal. How, you may wonder, can two bottles of shiraz, both from South Australia, be hundreds of dollars apart in price?

If you’ve been sipping wine for a while, your tastebuds might be able to tell the difference, but it’s not simply a case of expensive being good and cheaper being bad. It’s much more nuanced than that. Plus, cheaper wine can also be great. There are several factors that contribute to the price of a bottle of vino – resumé and hometown included. Here, we break down some of the key factors that make a wine cost what it costs.

Terroir (tair-wah) is a French word without a direct English translation, but its meaning is broadly a “sense of place”. The more a wine expresses the nuances of its specific region or site, the more expensive it is likely to be, often because this fruit comes from a special vineyard – or pocket of a vineyard – that’s been carefully tended in order to capture these limited grapes at their best. This requires extra attention and effort, which, in turn, can add to the final cost. You can taste this, but often, you can also see it on the label. The more details about a location, the more it might cost. For example, a bottle may state it’s from South Australia, but, a label can also get more specific, (say, Coonawarra, South Australia), and from there, it can also state the vineyard or specific block.

Of all the factors that can influence the cost of wine, where it’s from usually has the greatest impact. Wine made from fruit sourced from various sites or bigger vineyards can often come in cheaper because the producers have more grapes to work with, and blending different parcels can help create a solid style.         

Time to look at how the sausage is made. Or, in this case, the wine. Why? Because the cost of creating and running a vineyard is passed on to consumers through the price of the wine. This includes the cost of the land the grapes are grown on, and, like with all real estate, there are pricey areas and places where you get more for less.

Then there’s how the vineyard is managed and harvested. Some producers will use a harvesting machine, where they can pull in more grapes more efficiently. On the flipside, hand-picking can be more time-consuming and labour-intensive, but it can allow for a higher level of quality control because the picker can be more selective. This is just one example of how the many decisions and practices in the vineyard can affect a wine’s final price. 

Let’s talk about vintage. This is denoted by the year on a wine bottle, reflecting when the grapes were picked. A “good vintage” simply means the weather conditions for making wine that year were ideal. Particularly in Australia, where we have extreme weather conditions (we’re no strangers to fires and floods here), the vintage is important and talked about a lot. Generally, you want a Goldilocks of conditions: not too wet, not too dry. Grapes can sometimes rot in flood conditions, and in fire season, the smoke can taint the grape. A good vintage will be more expensive than a bad one, but there are some subtleties to that because wine will be abundant in a good vintage and scarce in the bad, which can also impact the price. 

When it comes to buying, in the great vintages, buy from everyone because it can be almost impossible to make bad wine that year, so everyone’s wine should be *chef’s kiss*. In bad vintages, it can be a good idea to buy from the trusted makers because it’s the people who really know what they’re doing who can turn lemons into lemonade. If the grapes aren’t up to scratch, the top vineyards just won’t make it – they have a reputation to uphold.