Written by Peter Rockwell | 18 February 2010

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Why do some wines cost so much more than others?

An honest enough question, but come on, it’s the same reason a Lamborghini Murciélago costs more than a Ford Focus: They’ll both get you to the corner and back, but the sophistication of the ride depends on when, where and how it was produced.

Let’s start with when. While vintage may not be that big a deal when it comes to under twenty buck weekday drinking wines, it’s a major selling point for the pricier big guns — especially if they’ve been around for awhile. Great years typically translate their pedigree to the price tag and the older and rarer they get, the more expensive they become.

And all that’s linked to where. Every wine producing country has its share of the high end — some more than others. Regions like France’s Bordeaux and Burgundy, Italy’s Piedmont and California’s Napa Valley are just some that have more than their fair share of posh wine real estate. After decades (if not centuries) of growing grapes in these areas, winemakers know their way around their soil and that history has made their output highly sought after and therefore worth mucho dinero.

But you can’t ask a fortune for a bottle if it doesn’t taste good; so how a wine is made can be the deal breaker. Back to that everyday drop: Odds are it’s reasonably priced because it’s made with ripe grapes grown in any number of regions within its country that are blended together to create a uniform flavour year after year. Though there’s nothing wrong with that (I drink that sort of thing all the time), the über premium juice is squeezed from handpicked fruit grown on single vineyards and tended to by winemaking royalty.

The kicker is that pricey wines (especially recent vintages) are usually so complex that they’re nowhere near ready for drinking; with that cheaper bottle giving you way more joy for your buck if you’re looking for a drink tonight.

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