How to Determine Price of Wine

Cost by the Glass and Bottle

Aug 10, 2009 Diana Braun

How to know what to pay per a glass of wine based on the cost of a bottle.

The price of a bottle of wine can range from just a few dollars to well over a few hundred dollars. The price is strongly influenced by its age (vintage) as well as the quality perceived by consumers. To determine the price of a glass of wine, you must first determine the cost of the bottle. Online sites such as wine-searcher.com and winezap.com offer tools that search a database and present the user with a list of merchants and the current selling price.

How to Price a Glass of Wine

Most restaurants offer wine by the glass. To know how much a glass should cost, you must know how much a bottle costs. Some states will even publish a book that displays the wholesale cost of all liquor. The accepted standard of mark-up for retail is 200% and a 300% markup in restaurants.

If a good liquor shop sells a bottle of wine for $20, then plan on paying $30 for the same bottle of wine at a restaurant. Also, look at several stores and restaurants to gauge what the average price should be.

States publish price books for liquor because it helps to establish an industry standard and allows distributors to offer discounts on quantity orders. These discounts often come into play when a case or more is purchased.

The accepted standard for a glass of wine is based on the guidelines that there are approximately four glasses in a bottle and one glass should buy the bottle for the house. This means that the restaurant or establishment should start seeing a profit on the second glass sold of every bottle.

As soon as a bottle of wine is opened, it starts to decay and lose its taste. Even if the restaurant doesn’t sell the whole bottle, once it’s been opened and the first glass has been bought, they break even on cost.

Determine the Price of a Bottle

Wine-searcher.com and winezap.com are two great websites that provide tools that help assess the value of regional bottles of wine.

Open web browser and navigate to wine-searcher.com. Scroll down to the bottom the page and click the “wine valuation” link.
Scroll to the bottom of the page for the wine price calculator. Enter “Wine Name,” “Vintage,” and “Merchant State.” Click “Search.”
Review prices of selected wine on resulting page. Merchant, location, wine detail, and current price will all be displayed.

Wine-searcher.com is free to use and can be used to calculate the price of any wine. Results will be limited to merchants who sponsor the site. To get the full list of merchants and wine prices, a subscription must be purchased.

The copyright of the article How to Determine Price of Wine in New World Wine is owned by Diana Braun. Permission to republish How to Determine Price of Wine in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.