Wine Economics 101 - Why You Want To Pay More

Every year the Chancellor bleeds a a little more cash from you as he stacks on yet more tax to life's essentials,  with alcohol getting hit hard pretty much every time. Whilst this is unfortunately inevitable and unstoppable, there are a few things that you may like to bear in mind to make your money go further when buying wine; knowledge is power as they say! Now we all  know that you generally get what you pay for in this life; that 'value' saucepan is guaranteed to develop a major structural fault whilst your balancing boiling water over something fleshy! Now I haven't got anything against the cheaper bottles of wine, some of them are very palatable and won't break the bank if you need a dozen or so of them. Shockingly though, you are only getting 47 pence worth of wine in a £5 bottle! Over half the price is tax with the rest attributed to seller profit, packaging and transport. Because there is a flat duty rate on wine, the higher you move up the price points the more the quality rises. The good news is that the quality of the wine multiplies much more than the monetary cost. For example, if you were to go from a £5 to £10 bottle of wine it would be double the monetary cost but the quality of the wine would improve a staggering 6 times! You can see from the diagram below how the actual quality of the vino rises exponentially quicker than the cost of the bottle. Obviously it's ridiculous to suggest that everybody should just start buying £20 + bottles of plonk because you are technically getting more for your money. Working to a budget is a necessity for most of us (except for those who dictate the budget!) but going from a £5 bottle to one that costs £7.50 is well worth the extra few quid. As cliched as it may sound, quality should win out over quantity so why not sacrifice a bottle or two in order to experience a significantly better product and make your pounds work smarter not harder.