re: On average, how much do you spend on a bottle of wine?

Would love a list of very goods at $20-30. Seriously. I have a hard time finding good reds under 35-40. Used to like a Ridge in that 30 range but they’ve climbed.

What do you like?

You can still find Ridge Three Valleys for 30

$20-$30

15-20

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Wine margins at restaurants and bars are pretty wild. I get why, but sometimes the markup is hard to swallow at a nice enough place. Might as well be the a-hole paying the corkage fee.

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My buddy owns a wine bar. Markup isn't furniture or jewelry level, but up there.

I buy most of my wine online from Casemates and de Négoce. Sometimes you get a dud but in general you get well made wines at <$20 bottle that beat anything you’d get off the shelf at the grocery store in the sub-$40 range.

Casemates is a daily deal site that sends bottles ahead to the community so there are unbiased tasting notes/reviews on the message board for whatever wine is on sale that day. The catch is that you usually have to at least 3-6 bottles at a time, or a case to get the best price.

Négoce is Cameron Hughes, he simply buys wine from oversupplied producers and sells it under his own label. He under NDA so can’t say where the wine is from - but he tells you varietal, location, vintage, and oak program, which once you know your tastes is all that you need to know anyway. So it’s a bit of a mystery. As one poster alluded to, many producers are willing to sell him their extra wine on the cheap to maintain the illusion of scarcity and continue to sell their wine at premium prices. Also as Cameron would say, wine is not expensive to make, it is expensive to sell.

Weekly, $15
The odd weekend, $20-35
Special occasions including holidays, $40-65

I don’t drink wine. Wine is for cat ladies. I drink isopropyl alcohol.