Why are wine kits expensive when there's a global wine glut?

[Koula]

If there's such an enormous glut of wine in the world, then why are wine kits so expensive? Especially in Australia where 25% of the worlds wine is grown! A walk into most home brew shops and you can expect to pay at least $120 for a box of concentrate. Now, for those of us who want to distill grape juice for various alchemical reasons, this doesn't make the process any easier! Any recommendations for sources would be much appreciated.

[guittarmaster]

Welches grape juice. I use that for making wine. If done right the white grape juice can end up like a pinot grigeo and the red concord will take to oak very well, almost like a boring pinot noir. Both will be better than most of the cheaper bottles of commercial wine after about 6months. Of course that just my opinion on tasting notes.

I would think the white grape juice would make a decent brandy. Just like the concentrate wine don't expect it to win any awards but it could be good for cutting your teeth.

Gm

[Koula]

Thanks for the tip. It's been well documented that expensive wine is an illusion of the senses. I'm not sure we can get Welshes brand here... and there's no Costco either which I imagine would carry American brands... but I'll see what kind of grape juice is available in the grocery stores. You're talking about concentrate then?

[Prairiepiss]

A 5 gal kit runs fro $75 to $200 or up here. But you have to look at it from a wine price perspective.

5 gallons will make approx 25 bottles of wine.
$125 for a kit would be $5 a bottle. About half price of an average lower end bottle of wine around here.

My favorite wine costs me $14 a bottle. So $350 for 25 bottles. Even if I got a vase price of say $12 a bottle. That's $300. So if I could make a comparable wine for say $200. I'm still ahead $100 to $150. Not bad if you ask me.

The problem is when you convert it to brandy. Which it isn't being sold for. 5 gal at 12% will give you approx .6 gal of good drink. Or approx 3 fifths of 40% brandy. So $125 for a 5 gal kit will be $42 a fifth. That doesn't look as good.

For a brandy you would be better off. Buying grapes and pressing them yourself. Then you could actually make two things with what you get. Ferment on the grapes. Remove the cleared wine and distill for brandy. Then distill the leftover grape pulp to get some grappa.

My local homebrew shop once a year offers good wine grapes in bulk . At a fare price. But you are still looking at $50 to $75 for enough for 5 gal. Somewhere between 50lbs and 90lbs needed. So how much can you get that much grapes for? 50 lbs at $1 a pound $50 on the cheap end. Most regular grapes around here are $2 a pound so now your looking at $100. If only 50 lbs is needed?

Only way its feasible. Is if you can get a really good price on the grapes. Have a hookup at a vineyard?

[guittarmaster]

Thanks for the tip. It's been well documented that expensive wine is an illusion of the senses. I'm not sure we can get Welshes brand here... and there's no Costco either which I imagine would carry American brands... but I'll see what kind of grape juice is available in the grocery stores. You're talking about concentrate then?

Yeah, concentrated grape juice from the grocery store. Just make sure there are no perseratives in it and it's %100 juice.

[MDH]

Thanks for the tip. It's been well documented that expensive wine is an illusion of the senses. I'm not sure we can get Welshes brand here... and there's no Costco either which I imagine would carry American brands... but I'll see what kind of grape juice is available in the grocery stores. You're talking about concentrate then?

I don't necessarily agree with that. While some people use expense to justify their liking for a product, those of us who aren't tools realize that sometimes wines are naturally expensive from a non-marketing based perspective because of processes like the Solera process, which I will accept nothing less than for Port.

[baron4406]

Me an the misses make wine also, mostly from fruit. Our wines aren't sweet tho we always ferment dry. At our local homebrew store the owner gave us a little taste of some "$150 a bottle" Italian wine he made last year. The process he went thru to make it almost gave me a headache, it was that involved it boggled your mind. Taste? Easily the most complex, flavorful wine i ever tasted (and we hit 30+ wineries a year). He also gave us a taste of a kit he carries from the same Italian grapes and it was darn near as good-he said age it for another year and it would be a dead ringer. At $150 for that kit for that wine (comes out to $6 to $7 a bottle) its worth every penny. Sometimes you do get what you pay for.

BTW a great "cheap wine" site is http://www.avoidbadwine.com/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" rel="nofollow

[Koula]

expensive wine is an illusion of the senses.

I don't necessarily agree with that. While some people use expense to justify their liking for a product, those of us who aren't tools realize that sometimes wines are naturally expensive from a non-marketing based perspective because of processes like the Solera process, which I will accept nothing less than for Port.

I agree, completely from the standpoint of traditional methods and authentic production processes, there is no substitute. I wasn't actually comparing the extremes of say 'GMO/grown in a laboratory' wine, with 'Italian bio-dynamic and blessed by fairies' wine.

Just that there was a TED talk about how the story behind our food, the experience leading up to ingesting, alters our expectations and the proof in the pudding is that our synaptic pathways also act differently. Basically some researchers stuck a bunch of people in MRI's and fed them "cheap" and "expensive" wines. They first fooled around with telling them which wines they were drinking and gave them a good story about the wine. It's not the chemistry of the wine itself that changed the neuro-pathways used by the brain, but rather the story they were given about the wine before ingesting. By 'illusion of the senses', I was more referring to it being the personal, and therefore tangible experience that matters more than the price tag. This no doubt was a very expensive experiment that simply validated that 'marketing' works magic on the human brain, even making us believe the craziest untruths.

I'm sure an expensive wine with a great story will taste amazing, personally I've had far too many $80+ bottles of wine that are now meaningless memories. Equally, an out of this world camping trip with a great friend whilst lamenting about old times, would probably make a bottle of home-brew taste a thousand times better then the posh hipster bottle you paid far too much for in an organic restaurant in the city...

[baron4406]

Koula is right, wine is more about the experiences drinking it than the wine itself. Its truly amazing how good home made wine is, a good buddy makes a dry mulberry wine that is a dead ringer for a Cabernet. Since he has a mulberry tree his wine costs him much less than $1 a bottle

[pistachio_nut]

This is kind of political so if there's anything that might bother you about that kind of thing please skip this video. It's also offensive to anyone who refrains from bad language or is religious. I apologize in advance for that, hope not to offend anyone. There are also tits.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5amLAMRQk5I" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" rel="nofollow

Skip to 11 minutes to get to the heart of it. It's organic vs non-organic, but I believe the basics of the lessons therein translate well to wine or just about anything else that is a matter of personal preference.

[stairman]

now that was worth watching
I don't know if you folks have the trader joe brand of stores but they have a wine they affectionately call 2 buck chuck aka as Charles Shaw wines...1.99 a bottle and it tastes just fine to me and fooled a buch of wine "experts"

At the 28th Annual International Eastern Wine Competition, Shaw's 2002 Shiraz received the double gold medal, besting the roughly 2,300 other wines in the competition.

Shaw's 2005 California Chardonnay was judged Best Chardonnay from California at the Commercial Wine Competition of the 2007 California Exposition and State Fair. The chardonnay received 98 points, a double gold, with accolades of "Best of California" and "Best of Class".

there were some irate wine experts at those competitions lol