In contemporary society, many people wish to enjoy good food and beverages while preferring to avoid excessively high prices. Finding something delicious at an affordable price is satisfying, and discovering value beyond the price point is even more gratifying. Price remains a factor that cannot be ignored, as it directly impacts daily life.
The same holds true for wine. While internationally renowned wines are attractive, many bottles remain financially inaccessible due to their pricing. This situation often creates a preconception that wine is inherently expensive.
Perhaps as a counterbalance to this perception, recent years have seen an increased presence of wines marketed as “inexpensive yet delicious” or “high cost performance wine” in supermarkets and retail chains.
That said, while identifying inexpensive wines is straightforward, finding wines with genuinely high cost performance is not a simple task. Wines cannot be judged by external appearance alone. Moreover, pricing strategies involve various considerations including distribution networks. It is impossible to account for all these factors comprehensively.
This article examines inexpensive wines and high cost performance wines from the perspective of a winemaker. Use this analysis as a guide in your search for wines of exceptional value.
Note that in this article, “inexpensive wines” presupposes low retail prices, whereas “high cost performance wines” does not necessarily presuppose low retail prices.
Article Premises
Before proceeding to the main discussion, I must establish the premises of this article.
Generally, methods for producing wine inexpensively parallel those for other products. Specifically: produce large quantities, of identical products, in single production runs. This requires introducing manufacturing equipment and implementing manual-based, streamlined processes with minimal waste to achieve predetermined wine quality. This represents a complete equipment-based industry operating within the realm of scale merit.
This method enables the most economical production. Many inexpensive wines in circulation are produced through this approach.
However, the “inexpensive wines” addressed in this article do not include such mass-produced products.
One reason is that I lack direct experience with such mass production processes. More importantly, I believe the perspective of a producer affiliated with a winery that does not engage in mass production offers greater value. Therefore, please temporarily set aside the commonly held framework of “inexpensive wine = industrial product.” The inexpensive wines discussed in this article do not presuppose imported wines sold domestically in Japan for several hundred yen per bottle.
The theme of this article is: when visiting and purchasing from a winery, how do inexpensive wines differ from high cost performance wines?
Note
Many may harbor aversion toward inexpensively mass-produced wines. However, industrially mass-produced wines often exhibit more stable quality than wines produced by technically inferior individual winemakers, and can frequently be considered higher quality.
Inexpensive Wines and High Cost Performance Wines
Typically, no substantial correlation exists between wine price and quality.
Nevertheless, from the perspective of winemaking, inexpensive wines and high cost performance wines are sometimes positioned within the same framework, and sometimes constitute entirely different entities.
As a winemaker producing and selling wines under my own name, even inexpensive wines cannot follow a “cheap and poor quality” approach. The minimum requirement is that wines offered under my name must meet quality standards that cause no embarrassment.
When operating under this premise, the quality gap between inexpensive wines and high cost performance wines effectively disappears. Let me explain why. While wine pricing can accommodate wide variation, the range of a winemaker’s professional pride remains extremely narrow.
Managing quality within this narrow range of professional standards naturally results in minimal variation in final product quality.
This explains why inexpensive wines and high cost performance wines occupy the same framework. When both maintain quality exceeding their price points, both equally represent high cost performance wines.
Then what causes these two categories to become entirely distinct entities? Let us proceed to that explanation.
Why Inexpensive Wines Are Inexpensive
Consider the following scenario: Can you prepare a dish priced at 700 yen using meat that costs 10,000 yen per 100 grams?
While perhaps not impossible, it would be nearly impossible through conventional approaches.
Winemaking operates identically. Cost ratio represents one price-determining factor that cannot be ignored in winemaking. Specifically, producing inexpensive wine precludes using expensive grapes.
The critical question becomes: what constitutes “expensive grapes”?
Several factors determine grape pricing. The four most representative elements are:
- Yield variation based on varietal characteristics
- Cultivation cost
- Vineyard value
- Yield per unit area
Extremely simplified: grape prices necessarily decrease when maximizing yield per unit area using high-yielding varieties with mechanization rather than manual labor in vineyards of lower value. The critical point here: what decreases is grape “price,” not grape “value.”
We do not require poor-quality grapes—that is, grapes of “low value.” The essential approach involves reducing “price” while maintaining “value” above a consistent threshold.
Implementing such operations within a single vineyard is not impossible but generates considerable waste. Consequently, many wineries predetermine specific vineyards for producing inexpensive wines. This predetermination is also important from the previously mentioned “vineyard value” perspective.
Vineyard Hierarchies Exist Independent of Official Systems
Recently, German wine law has undergone revision, transitioning from the traditional classification system based on must weight at harvest to a vineyard classification system closer to France’s Appellation d’Origine Contrôlée (AOC). Wine producer associations within Germany, including the Verband Deutscher Prädikatsweingüter (VDP), had already independently adopted such systems.
However, vineyard hierarchies existed even without official systems.
No one considers cultivating inexpensive grapes in vineyards known for favorable sun exposure, air circulation, and capacity to produce high-quality grapes. Furthermore, grapes cultivated in such vineyards naturally achieve high quality. Appropriate grape cultivation naturally selects “appropriate vineyards.”
From this perspective, high cost performance wines are those using grapes harvested from high-quality vineyards—not merely “appropriate vineyards”—despite relatively low pricing. Using the previous analogy: dishes offered at 700 yen despite being prepared with meat costing 10,000 yen per 100 grams.
Related
Climate change has recently caused previously “appropriate vineyards” to become “more than appropriate vineyards”—that is, vineyards of higher quality. From this perspective, wines produced using grapes cultivated in traditionally “appropriate vineyards” show quality improvement trends, which can also be interpreted as enhanced cost performance.
The Reality of Inexpensive Wine Production
The winery to which I belong maintains membership in the VDP producer association. Consequently, vineyards for producing “inexpensive wine” at our winery refer to vineyards excluded from VDP classification. Neither harvested grape quality nor resulting wine quality factor into this designation.
Wines produced from grapes harvested in these vineyards are sold at lower prices.
These vineyards do maintain somewhat higher yields per unit area. We implement almost no manual yield restriction. Conversely, nearly all other cultivation operations are executed identically to other vineyards.
We do not reduce disease and pest control applications by even one cycle simply because vineyards produce grapes for inexpensive wines. Cover crop management is likewise executed identically. The primary difference involves mechanical versus hand harvesting.
The same approach applies within the winery.
We do not compromise management protocols simply because wines are designated as inexpensive. Management remains identical to other wines. Naturally, raw material cost constraints preclude adopting high-cost winemaking techniques, but this does not result in reduced wine quality. If forced to identify differences at the standard operational level: because bottling occurs earlier than for other wines, dry yeast is more frequently employed to ensure complete fermentation. However, even this does not constitute an absolute rule.
Incidentally, have you ever observed vineyard names or district names on labels of inexpensive wines?
Probably not. This represents another reason why inexpensive wines are inexpensive, and also the reason why inexpensive wines and high cost performance wines can be distinguished.
High Cost Performance Wines from the Winemaker’s Perspective
Are you familiar with second labels?
While France apparently maintains explicit definitions, I will consider the concept more broadly here.
For example, not all grapes harvested from vineyards designated for VDP Grosses Gewächs (the highest classification for dry wines) prove suitable for maximum quality. Wines produced from remaining grapes after selecting a portion frequently belong to second labels. Separately, when 2,000 liters of wine are produced by selecting high-quality grapes, only 1,000 liters may be bottled as Grosses Gewächs.
Wine produced using the remaining 1,000 liters also represents a form of second label.
Reference
Perhaps no wines exhibit higher cost performance than wines belonging to such second label categories. After all, the raw materials are equivalent to meat costing 10,000 yen per 100 grams.
The rationale for using expensive grapes in wines with relatively suppressed pricing is extremely straightforward.
Independent of official systems, wineries implement vineyard hierarchies as previously noted. Within this framework, allocation proceeds sequentially from highest quality materials to higher-priced wines. Not all volume is necessarily allocated, with upper-class remainders allocated to lower classes.
Lower classes—wines with lower retail prices—receive decreasing allocation volumes per source with increasing source diversity, or receive no allocation whatsoever.
Conversely, some wines are produced with the premise of receiving allocations from upper classes.
The critical considerations are: how many types and what volume were allocated, or whether no allocation occurred.
I will explain using examples from wines I produce.
Inexpensive Riesling Trocken and High Cost Performance Terroir Wine
Our winery classifies wine categories based on criteria established by the VDP.
The VDP defines wine classifications based on vineyard classifications as follows:
VDP.GROSSE LAGE: Wines produced using grapes harvested from designated grand cru vineyards (yield: ~50 hl/ha, hand-harvested)
VDP.ERSTE LAGE: Wines produced using grapes harvested from designated premier cru vineyards (yield: ~60 hl/ha, hand-harvested)
VDP.ORTSWEIN: Village wines produced using grapes harvested from vineyards located within defined areas (municipalities) (yield: ~75 hl/ha)
VDP.GUTSWEIN: Wines produced using grapes harvested from estate-owned vineyards
Wines produced from grapes harvested from the previously introduced vineyards designated for inexpensive wines are classified as either ORTSWEIN or GUTSWEIN depending on yield and blending conditions.
In addition to these classifications, we have established a wine category designated as TERROIR WINE.
The wines introduced here are Riesling trocken, a GUTSWEIN, and Grünschiefer Riesling trocken, a TERROIR WINE. Respective prices are 9.9 euros for Riesling trocken and 14.4 euros for Grünschiefer Riesling trocken.
Riesling trocken is based on “vineyards for inexpensive wines,” with the possibility of blending grapes from all vineyards within the same region, though in some cases no blending occurs. Conversely, Grünschiefer Riesling trocken consists of a fixed blend from two vineyards. Moreover, these vineyards are Felseneck, designated for Grosses Gewächs, and Ritterhölle, designated as VDP.ERSTE LAGE. Incidentally, the distance between these two vineyards is approximately two kilometers, with both belonging to the same green slate soil.
Prices for single-vineyard wines are 36 euros for Felseneck and 23 euros for Ritterhölle. Neither represents an inexpensive price for German wines sold in Germany.
Grünschiefer Riesling trocken, blended from grapes harvested from these two vineyards, is definitively not wine that should be sold inexpensively when evaluated solely by vineyard designation.
Harvest timing and winemaking methods are certainly adjusted subtly for respective wines, but no differences exist in cultivation methods including yield restriction. Furthermore, surplus volumes from wines produced as Grosses Gewächs and Erste Lage are frequently utilized for this wine. Considering the vineyards to which the utilized grapes belong and the quality obtainable from those vineyards, the exceptional cost performance of Grünschiefer Riesling trocken should be evident.
Considering winemaking processes, such wines must exist to some degree at each winery.
While such wines exhibit less pronounced individual vineyard characteristics, fundamental quality remains high. They represent quintessential second label wines—from the producer’s perspective, wines resembling special gifts.
Summary: Cost, Performance, and the Degree of Attribute Averaging
As a general trend, lower-priced wines incorporate increasingly diverse grape attributes. Multiple vineyards are combined, multiple quality levels are combined, multiple producers are combined. In some cases, even multiple varieties are combined.
By aggregating and blending diverse attributes, characteristics possessed individually by single attributes become diluted and averaged.
Increased blending ratios and averaged characteristics do not imply reduced quality or deteriorated flavor. In most cases, elimination of pronounced characteristics actually enhances drinkability.
However, in the wine world, the degree of averaging and price maintain an inverse correlation. From this perspective, inexpensive wines might be characterized as wines with relatively high degrees of averaging, while high cost performance wines might be characterized as wines with moderate degrees of averaging combined with suppressed pricing.
While producing wine myself, I occasionally perceive certain wines as remarkably good value at their price points. The reasons vary depending on circumstances, but I find exploring such circumstantial “special situation wines” engaging. Most importantly, such wines typically exhibit exceptionally high cost performance.
