I’ve been spending more time in Napa Valley these days. Every time I roll down into the valley from the Oakville grade I marvel at the beauty of all those vineyards spread out before me, framed by mountains and dotted with wineries of various form and structure. But more than the wineries, what really interest me are the vineyards. It is the Napa Valley vineyards that have made "Napa Valley" a brand nearly as meaningful and powerful as "Bordeaux" or…

The answer to the question in the previous post is $25 – $30. That response is based on the philosophy of Over-Delivering. While it is possible to find value at every wine pricing level, it is far more difficult to deliver value when the wine is high priced, if only because the inherent reason for pricing a wine high is to raise expectations among the buyers. Over-Delivering means giving the buyer more than they expected. It is a practice that…

I traveled to meet with a client yesterday, to taste their wines, talk to them about the progress of their first wines and to go over marketing. The wines will be released in November. About halfway through the conversation I brought up the issue of pricing, which hadn’t been settled. They said,"What do you think they should be priced at?" –It’s chardonnay and Pinot (mainly Pinot)–It’s clearly will be wine that is near the best of their region–They will start…

Let me start by saying some nice things about distributors and those who work for distributors. Some of America’s most knowledgeable wine people, the kind of people who understand the market intimately, have a keen appreciation of what retailers and restaurateurs want, and have palates that are built on broad tastings, work at distributorships across the country. Many of them care deeply about wine, where where the industry is going and, just as important, where it has been. But then…

Average is good! So say the growers who are carefully watching the crop in the vineyards of California’s North Coast. The past three years (thankfully from a market standpoint) have been below average. it’s been a situation that has helped the oversupply of grapes come back into balance after the downturn in the economy that  so forcefully hit the high end wine market beginning in 2001. Now, growers are seeing "crop sets" that are in the neighborhood of 20%-25% above…