A year in the vineyard

I often get asked, both by visitors to my winery and by friends outside the wine world, “How come some wines cost so much more than others? Can they really be worth that much money?”

It is often a difficult question to answer because it becomes a personal issue based on wealth and how much they know and love about wine.

Some people try to work out how much a bottle of wine should cost based on how much it costs to make. Some by trying to find an objective level of its quality. For lower-priced wines, this can be done to some extent but once we get into higher-priced wines, desirability and rarity take over. This month we will look at the costs of producing a bottle of wine. Next month we will look at why the price ...