What Wine is Worth

I have to wipe the sleep out of my eyes, perk up and give a drive time radio show interview, with some regularity. At least this morning's interview was with KSRO Radio in Sonoma, and the time zone was in my favor for a change. By the way, if any of you heard the show, my name is pronounced reese - not rice (I only told them 3 times).

Today's topic was about Wine Fraud, a subject on which I have have had a lot to say of late. I prepared a good 20 minutes worth of discussion in my mind, but I got closer to two minutes of actual air time. Which is why you are about to settle in for my latest installment on the subject.

Adulterating wine, by adding sugar (or water) when you are not allowed to, or even stretching it with wine from another region, are common and well known instances of wine fraud. Switching labels is the most obvious way to defraud a consumer, but today I am going to talk about the least obvious.

The most insidious, and probably common instance of bilking the consumer is not actually fraud at all. It is the simple act of charging more than a wine is worth.

Just how much is a wine worth anyway? Rare wines, those that are traded at auction and demand the highest premiums are commodities as much as coffee and sugar are.

These wines are traded for investment purposes, often a half dozen or more times, before being opened, with each iteration raising the price.

Auctions are fickle market places, a wine that sold for $1,000 with spirited bidding one week, may not get so much as a raised eyebrow the next. Conversely wines may sell for many times greater than their expected values, setting a new benchmark for the future, and skewing averages.

When these wines are young, they are sold as "futures," essentially a way to gamble on their price before they are even released.

In the early 70s, and again at the turn of the 21st century, this practice led to mediocre vintages being greatly overpriced, before anyone even had a chance to taste them.

So if you can't trust auction results, and future trading can drive prices beyond demand, how do you know when you are paying a fair price for a wine?

In short, you don't and can't know.

Instead you can do what any good consumer does, shop around and compare prices. The Internet has made this much easier than it used to be.

And yet, a quick search for 1982 Mouton yields US retail prices as low as $845 and as high as $1795 for the same wine.

You would think that the ability to look up these prices so easily would have led to a smaller disparity in prices. They haven't.

And why not? Because there is still a sucker born every day.

The merchants that are selling wine for twice as much as the competition are doing so for one reason only, they can get away with it. They are committing no crime, and my implications to the contrary, they are not even defrauding the consumer.

Don't be a sucker. Don't pay more for a wine than you have to. If the circumstances warrant it, and you are comfortable with the price, no amount is too much. If however, you can't quell the feeling that you are getting ripped off, you probably are.

I appraise wine cellars, and I charge for it. This is just a bit of a disclaimer, because of course I would love to appraise your collection. I go out of my way to be as fair as possible, and to take every aspect into consideration, and for this reason, beware too who may be setting values of your wines.

If you are not going to use me, and of course not all of you are, be sure that you use someone who's motives you trust. Asking the buyer to appraise your wines is not a good idea.

For those of you doing it yourself, remember that auction prices are wholesale, and retail prices will be at least double, and don't forget to add the commission in any auction prices.

Oh, and for all you radio, and TV people out there, yes, I am always happy to be a guest on your program, but if you are an East Coast morning drive time show, expect a few yawns on my end.