California’s Glut of Wine Is Seeping Into The Marketplace & Awaiting You At Costco
Why Try Discount Wines During This Wine Surplus?
We were caught red-handed in the Costco check out line. We had nowhere to hide. Some Paso Robles friends bumped into us at Costco and wondered what California wine we were purchasing from a ‘discounter.’
We’ve written about large volumes of wine juice floating around the state of California as alcohol consumption declines. Boomers drove growth over the past 20 years but are not consuming as much wine as their early days. Gen X and Gen Y have yet to drink up the slack.
| ‘Tuck your ego away and experiment with some of these discount wines hitting the market.‘ |
Much of this extra wine is found in discounter’s stores with unfamiliar labels. After all, if you’re making $300 bottles of wine you can’t liquidate $15 bottles and maintain your panache. There is a lot of swagger selling expensive wines. Not so much with discount wine. When wine creators have an over supply of wine they need to monetize juice without damaging their primary brand.
Many wine makers create secondary brands/labels to help them monetize unsold vino. Some simply sell the juice, allowing others to bottle and market their wares.
Discounters like Costco (Kirkland), Trader Joe’s (Charles Shaw) and Grocery Outlet (Second Cheapest Wine) also sell private brand wines created with this extra bulk wine sloshing around California. At one point last year there were 217,000 gallons of California Cabernet Sauvignon for sale on WineBusiness.com. Where do you think this wine turned up?
Wine is finding it’s way to consumers via discounted bottles. And, some of it’s available at Costco where you’ll find Kirkland brands. Wines like Sauvignon Blanc, Chardonnay, Pinot Noir and Cabernet Sauvignon.
What wines did we choose as an experiment?
2024 Kirkland Sonoma Chardonnay $7
2023 Kirkland Russian River Valley Pinot Noir $11
2023 Kirkland Willamette Valley, Oregon Pinot Noir $12
2023 Kirkland Bordeaux Superieur (yes, from France, Cabernet & Merlot blend) $7
The $15 door mat we purchased was more expensive than any of this wine.
As you might guess none of the wines were magical. They were good, and importantly, they were very drinkable. Especially on a Wednesday night when opening a $60 bottle of Syrah seems extravagant. We laughed about consuming $6 of wine apiece from a $12 bottle. That’s $3 per glass. Compare that to $30 individually for a $60 bottle.
So tuck your ego away and experiment with some of these discount wines hitting the market. We suspect there are at least two more years worth of bulk wine flooding the market. It might even be 3-4 years worth of wine splashing around the West Coast (and throughout the world as well.)
The wine industry is in difficult straights. Half price mixed cases are all the rage in wineries now. Lots of wineries and vineyards are for sale while some wine makers simply wind down their businesses. As several wine makers tell us creating and selling wine is difficult in today’s market. Many grape growers think this situation is as painful as Prohibition 105 years ago.
Then they wink and whisper, ‘But, it’s a great time for consumers to find well priced quality wine.’
Some notes on our wine ranking system.
Bill & Erin Hodge write about California Wine, the estates & winemakers producing them and educational information about Vino. Living in California Wine Country provides a front row seat to the places you want to visit the most here in the Golden State.
– -✰ means -What’s next on your list of wines
-✰ means -Not liking it too much
✰ means -We’ll drink this wine, especially if it’s hosted!
✰+ means -You’ve got our attention and we might buy this wine.
✰+ + means -We’re hooked and we’re going to buy this wine.
When you see -✰/✰+ with a slash, it means we disagree.
