Episode 2 - A $150 Bottle of Wine

If you had $150 to spend on a bottle of wine, what would you buy?

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Okay. I have a question for both of you. If you had $150 to buy one bottle of wine, where are you buying it from and why? That's a good question.

SPEAKER_02 0:12

It wouldn't be Napa because a $150 isn't gonna get you much.

SPEAKER_01 0:15

Okay, yeah, and that's that's exactly where what I'm getting at, but keep going.

SPEAKER_02 0:20

That's a good question. Um because I have such a love for the Central Coast, I would try to find something like a a very handcrafted, curated, small production, like cool climate Sorra. I don't have a particular producer in mind, but I think one of the things so money doesn't solve all problems, but if you give a winemaker a blank check, well, maybe that's not entirely true. Because sometimes some of the best things in life are done under constraint. If you have infinite resources, then it just becomes at times overcooked. So I'm not necessarily saying that having more money is gonna necessarily yield a greater wine, but I think there are certain things that money can lend itself to.

SPEAKER_00 1:10

Well, I feel like I'm gonna be a cop-out and I'm gonna say Madeira. I know, kind of it's almost like uh John Madden, Brett Farr, that kind of love affair. It's like, hey, come on, get a room. Um but yeah, yeah, I mean, Madeira, because I can drink it over the course of several years, not that it'll last that long. Um and the the quality to price ratio is extraordinary. Um, so yeah, definitely. I think like I don't know, maybe a 20, 30-year-old Madeira, or maybe like a uh a uh freshcara, you know, a vintage Madeira would be my number one choice. But in terms of like a let's say if it's like a table wine, uh anything. I think I would have to go with like, okay, if I couldn't do Madeira, it would be something that um I've always been kind of curious about, but haven't splurged. Like I over at Backroom, there's Radicon for 90 bucks, so I could buy that and then have a little bit of money left over. I haven't had Radicon, I've had Grovner. Grovner's absolutely fantastic, but yeah, I go for a Radicon.

SPEAKER_01 2:12

Okay. If it was me, I'd get a grower vintage champagne. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Something fun, something small family.

SPEAKER_00 2:19

I changed my vote. Would you do that too? I go Madeira, then I go the champagne. Yeah, okay.

SPEAKER_01 2:23

Yeah, it's just fun. Because especially, but the problem is for me, I'd want to hold it for a long time and then open it. Yeah, just buy something old. Is that $150?

SPEAKER_00 2:34

How much is that Winston Churchill couve? That's probably around like $150, right? I think so. I've had oh sorry, the Paul Roger, Winston Churchill. I've had Paul Roger like their entry level. I think it's more than that.

SPEAKER_01 2:43

I think it's more than that.

SPEAKER_00 2:44

Yeah, you're probably right.

SPEAKER_01 2:44

Yeah, I think their vintage is about 100. I don't know. I can't remember. I like this a small, this real small, like the special club type growers. It's really, really cool, small growers that you can get with their couple of acres that they're farming and making their wine with. It's just really unique and really cool. But it brings me to the thing that you you said immediately is oh, I will I wouldn't buy Napa, that doesn't get you much.

SPEAKER_02 3:09

Yeah, yeah. Slightly said slightly tongue-in-cheek, but with some a little bit of truth in there.

SPEAKER_01 3:15

Yeah, and I think that's what, in a sense of when you're trying with uh the big thing with that I'm constantly hearing about Napa is how do we get the young people to come into Napa? How do we get them to start drinking Napa wine? And I think that's the problem. If you're a new person in the world of wine and you're thinking, I want big bold red cab, but I'm not gonna spend more than a hundred bucks. I'm not gonna even spend more than maybe fifty dollars because I'm I'm young, dumb, and broke.

SPEAKER_02 3:45

Yeah, I was gonna say a $40 price point. I, you know, you could look at the the numbers and and nerd out on them, you know, statistics on what's really moving in that demographic at those price points. But I'm thinking if I'm, you know, a 22-year-old, you know, maybe I've got my first job. I could see myself paying $35 for a bottle of wine, you know, once a week or every other week. And Napa, man, you're gonna have a really hard time finding a a red table wine under $60. Yeah. There's just there's just very few, if any.

SPEAKER_00 4:22

Yeah. Well, then of course the hard thing too is uh the cost tasting fee, hotel room. Absolutely. Restaurants here like um diddy, you know, think of that. You could yeah, yeah, you could save up and you know, spend $100, $150 on a really nice bottle in Napa cab and feel good about it, but it can be kind of hard to justify hundreds of dollars for one night hotel stay.

SPEAKER_02 4:44

Five, I think five hundred is the is the prevailing average hotel. That's how out of touch of reality I am. So it's just one of those things where you go, they're selling Napa as an experience, like you sell going to Disneyland as an experience. And if you're staying, I'm doing a three-day weekend with my partner. We're gonna go tasting, we're gonna do dinner. I'm spending anywhere from $1,200 to $2,000 just to be in Napa. Yeah, I'm spending $100 per tasting. I'm visiting three to six wineries. I'm already spending over $1,000 just in tastings with me and my partner. I'm out three grand just to stay and drink wine. That's not food, that's not travel, that's nothing. So for a three-day weekend, you could, you know, you could go super lean and stay at the Motel Six in Fairfield and drive on in. Sure. Eat McDonald's every morning, and but but that tasting ain't gonna change its price. And so you're looking at a couple to several thousand dollars for a weekend in Napa. That's unsustainable. That's that is for a lot of people a once-in-a-lifetime trip. And for a long time, that's sustained Napa. I don't know how much longer that's gonna work out.

SPEAKER_01 6:01

Yeah. Because for me, if I'm thinking, like I'm thinking back to when I first got into wine when I'm sitting in my college dorm room and I've nothing else to do, but and people are always asking me, what kind of wine do you like? And I have no idea, but everyone asks me because I'm from Napa, and I just would make something up. So when I was in college, I realized, okay, I gotta figure this out. So I went and started learning a little bit more about wine. I went to the wine shop and I was like, geez, all this wine's so expensive. And I go up to the counter and say, What's a really good wine that's more in my price range? And they're showing me like your Bouger, your some of your Spanish wines, and they're all really good. And I still think back to those wines and go, I would still drink that now. And I I have closer to the purchasing power to buy some of these of these expensive Napa wines, but I just don't want to, I don't want to part with my money that easily. And I mean, I feel that's the same for a lot of people. It's like, why would I spend this much on just honestly just a brand name if all wine can kind of be made the same like if I'm thinking it just from someone who doesn't know much about wine and I can think, isn't all wine made the same way? Why is this one $150 and this one $40? Yeah, maybe $150 one's better, but I can't tell the difference. I'll just buy the $40 one.

SPEAKER_02 7:14

It's also risk to reward. If I go out to a new restaurant I've never tried before, I'm spending $20 on a meal. And if it sucks, I'm totally fine writing off that $20 and going that way and going, that was a learning experience. But it's $100 just to taste the wine. Yeah. Let alone buy something blind. So let's envision you don't live near Napa. You live in the Midwest. You've somehow found this in a bottle shop, or you've heard about it and you're buying DTC and they're gonna ship it to you. I've now purchased a hundred and fifty dollar bottle of Napa cab that is gonna get sent to me on recommendation, taste blind, and it sucks. Wow, that's really I'm I'm now I'm sour on Napa because I just spent $150 on wine I don't like. I'm not making that mistake again.

SPEAKER_01 8:04

Yeah, and I had the experience. I bought a bottle of Napa cab, which I never do because I I just don't. I either get it for free or it's just not what I want to drink. And I'm not gonna say the brand or anything because I still to this day do not buy it and tell everybody else never to buy it because I had such a bad experience. It was like $80 or $90. I know it's not that much, but it was awful. It was undrinkable, and I dumped it, and I will never drink that brand again. But that's that's the problem, is for me as a if if I was a lesser involved consumer, I'd just go, this is how all Napa wine tastes, and I'm never gonna drink any of it again, and I'm just gonna get no why anyone pays that much money for that.

SPEAKER_02 8:44

And the sad reality is is like, ooh, a lot of people are skating on Napa reputation and making less than optimal wine, and that's worked for a while for a time, but now it's like, man, dude, you cannot afford to burn customers in in in 2026. It's just there's just their dollar is just too valuable.

SPEAKER_01 9:06

And I think that goes back to an even deeper point that I've that I've thought of before. I think to make wine, like if you look at Europe, if you look at Europe and all the rules they have on how to make wine or how long you have to age it, and it's all these certain methods of everything. Nap doesn't really have that. You just have to have it needs to be X amount of this grape from this area. But if you look at regions like Bordeaux, you can only pick this much of it to go into this for some level of grape quality. Or if you look at some of the Italian wines, it's the same. You can only pick this much. You have to age it for this much in this type of vessel and then in bottle, and then release it this many years later. Like there's a little bit more, and it's and it's cheaper than are you saying that's to their benefit? I'm saying it can help to be to their benefit because there's at least some level of quality control, so it at least hits a certain level of goodness before it's out on the market. Expectation. Yeah, it has an expectation of oh, this is a Shianti from Tuscany. I at least know somewhat what this is gonna taste like.

SPEAKER_02 10:14

Sure. Devil devil's advocate, their their hands get pretty tied on on what they can do, what they can plant. And so, and that's not to say that there aren't people in those regions making fantastic wine not adhering to those rules. They're just not allowed to label into that system. And so to that point, even Napa, America's premier growing region known for consistent quality, it still has its duds, it still has its its producers. Yeah, exactly. It still has its uh, you know, its false starts and it's suck, but the difference is again, if I buy a $15 to $20 bottle of European wine and it sucks, oh well, that's fine. I buy $150 an apple wine, I'm pretty fucking mad that I spent $150 for something that I'm gonna just cook with. So it just stings harder.

SPEAKER_01 11:11

The reason why I bring up the the the price of $150 is because in 2025, the average bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon in Napa was $145. It rose 10% from last year. If you just look at the average bottle itself for Napa, everything white, red, rose, whatever it be, $92 is the average bottle price.

SPEAKER_02 11:35

Yeah, that sounds about right. 100 was for the longest time, it seemed like 100 was the the magic number that and that was gonna get you a pretty representative Napa red still wine. And now to to to think you know, 150 is the average. Now, I don't know what kind of outliers they're dealing with. I know there's some fantastically expensive Napa wine, but there's really not a lot of cheap Napa wine. So if the average, even with those outliers, is 150 or 100, man, how good do you feel drinking a hundred dollar bottle of wine when it's great? Yeah, pretty good, but I can't do that all the time when it's shitty.

SPEAKER_01 12:17

And when you don't finish it. There's so many times I'll open a bottle of wine and I don't finish it, and I'm sitting there going, not a problem. It's a problem for me, and it just sits there on the counter, and that's why I'm always trying to give you guys my like we're sitting here with four bottles of wine open, and it's like, I'm not if any of this stays here, I'm not gonna finish it. And I'm just gonna feel like awful pouring it down the drain when it inevitably goes bad. But it's like I just I just don't, I just don't drink a lot. But I mean, it's just it's I mean, going back to it, I go to I bring a bottle of wine to my grandma. She drinks your five dollar Trader Joe's wine and loves it. God bless her. And I bring if I bring in like a nice bottle of Merlot for her, she loves Merlot. And if I brought her a $50 bottle, I think she'd she'd faint or she'd yell at me, saying, You why would you pay for a wine that that's expensive?

SPEAKER_02 13:05

Yeah, absolutely. So again, it we we live in Napa um and we consume a lot of wines from here to to Europe and abroad, and we get it in our head that you know we're we're talking about a hundred dollar average. That is prohibitively expensive for the average American.

SPEAKER_01 13:23

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 13:24

A once-a-year Thanksgiving dinner wine, yeah, is like 40 to 50 bucks. At least that's my that's that's my my thought.

SPEAKER_01 13:34

Yeah, I I I don't have any reputable source to back this up, but from what I've heard, in terms of US, your splurge or your upper end, like what people would think of premium quote unquote bottle of wine is like 30 bucks, 40 bucks.

SPEAKER_02 13:50

Absolutely. I I would believe it. And again, no no stats to back that up, but just just on life experience and conversations with people outside of the wine industry, that's that's about right. That's and we're sitting here at a like a hundred for just wine in general for now. Absolutely. And so it's just how do you get people now that like Napa wine? And I say now in 2026 with the economy that we have to part with a hundred dollars, let alone an 18-year-old who in three years is gonna be able to purchase wine, who knows nothing about wine and very little about Napa, to go, oh, I want to buy $100. I've got uh some money in my bank account. There's not, there's just you're not training the next generation to appreciate an apple wine, and you're gonna have this massive gap.

SPEAKER_01 14:37

And I think of it similar to the same problem that I feel like Burgundy has of Burgundy has gotten so expensive that a lot of people have just stopped recommending burgundy wines. Uh it's the same kind of issue.

SPEAKER_02 14:49

I'm not gonna spend this much money on a bottle of wine that I don't know of if it's I can I can re-roof my house or I can buy a single bottle of wine. Yeah, yeah, it's uh it's it's a little more on the extreme, and uh it's it's cost prohibitive.

SPEAKER_01 15:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 15:07

Which is unfortunate because there's a lot of amazing wine all throughout the world, and it it's just when you look at it from a purely educational perspective, there is is such a abundance of fantastic wine from new world to old world, variety of regions and growing conditions, wine styles, etc. And most people really kind of just stick with what they know, and I guess that's fine, but you're missing out, yeah. You're missing out, and um you want to make yourself as competitive as possible as a growing region in the market segment that you're you you're operating in, and Napa in the in the premium ultra premium had been highly competitive for a really long time. That was the you know, you reach there when you want super expensive wine. When people can't afford or aren't gravitating towards it, you gotta figure out how to make your wine more approachable.

SPEAKER_00 16:02

And you kind of touched on this earlier, and there was actually a uh CEO of a corporation, um, beverage corporation that mentioned exactly what you were saying in that the wine industry has done a very good job of premiumization, but how do you welcome in the next generation of consumers?

SPEAKER_01 16:19

With a hundred dollar tastings.

SPEAKER_00 16:21

There you go. There you go.

SPEAKER_01 16:22

That's the problem. You put you put these big heavy doors that no one can really push open.

SPEAKER_02 16:28

Sometimes literally, I mean yeah, literally in some of these wineries. You're like, oh, okay, now I know where all this money is going. Yeah, it's in massive redwood.

SPEAKER_01 16:39

Yeah, yeah. So like, what would I rather go do? Oh, I'm just gonna go get a white claw or uh just not gonna drink wine.

SPEAKER_02 16:47

You again, you want Napa wine to be at the forefront of people's minds when they make their purchases.

SPEAKER_00 16:56

I think it's a double-edged sword, not to keep like kind of going in circles with this, but it's it's a double-edged sword in that the the fact that Napa wine is expensive helps to keep agriculture as the most viable option and helps to keep the Napa Valley beautiful and not a bunch of track housing or what have you, or you know, strip malls. Well, actually, I'm dating myself. Strip malls are not so much of a thing anymore.

SPEAKER_01 17:19

Well just you know, but you can't run down a vineyard. That's I mean, you go to a lot of the areas of central California and it's and it's just kind of sitting there, not being or or farmed in or farmed in this in the style that Napa prides itself on.

SPEAKER_02 17:33

Yeah, you can farm Napa vineyards cheaper. I promise you, you can. It's not gonna look like Napa as you know it, but you can do a lot to reduce your cost. There's a lot of vineyards you don't see from the freeway. Maybe farm those a little differently. Just try. You know, if if you really there are some things that are never gonna change in terms of labor never gets cheaper. That's a truism. Land never gets cheaper. Um, but you still can do things differently in the cellar and in the in the vineyard to lower your costs.

SPEAKER_00 18:09

Interesting talking about labor. Um, I heard that the I think the minimum wage in Portugal is about to go up by like 45%.

SPEAKER_02 18:17

Wow.

SPEAKER_00 18:18

Which might mean that um some of our beloved Portuguese wines may become more expensive. I know, pour one out.

SPEAKER_01 18:24

Yeah. What do you think? So $92 is average bottle for an app put price. What do you think Sonoma's average bottle price is? 54.

SPEAKER_00 18:33

62?

SPEAKER_01 18:34

You're both wrong. You both are over 30. Really? 37. Interesting. So if I'm, and these are all numbers that I got from wine business monthly, so I can so I can make sure to cite my source on this. If I'm want uh Northern California, California wine tasting experience, and I see that hundred dollar bottle price tag, average price tag, but I see 37 for Napa or for Sonoma, I'm just gonna go to Sonoma. I'm just gonna go to Healdsburg, I'm gonna go somewhere where it's yeah, Mendocino. I could go down to Monterey, maybe um uh Paso somewhere.

SPEAKER_02 19:13

I mean Napa needs to be at the front of people's mind if they want to continue to be the the crown jewel of California winemaking. And the reality is it's way easier to go down and buy a case somewhere instead of one or two bottles of Napa wine. Um so big challenge. Uh I think we have the right minds to come up with solutions to make us more competitive and and not have to sacrifice the quality and and beauty that Napa is known for. But man, you have to come up with creative solutions and and some people just aren't budging.