Who’s Buying Expensive Wine?

Joe Roberts, AKA 1WineDude, and ultra-premium wine marketers everywhere, want to know.

The question is prompted by some interesting statistics from Thomas Stanley’s Stop Acting Rich. Stanley is one of those know-nothings who claim there is no difference between premium wine and the cheap stuff. But Stanley does know a lot about wealthy people, and they don’t buy a lot of expensive wine, as Roberts notes:

However, I don’t disagree with Stanley’s data, which he has garnered through extensive surveys of U.S. millionaires (those who have a net worth of over $1M USD). And that data quite clearly shows that millionaires generally are not buying $150 Margaret River Chardonnays, no matter how good they might be. In fact, millionaires in the U.S. rarely purchase wines priced over $50 / bottle.

In a chapter titled “Grapes of Wrath,” Stanely shares what I found to be one of the more shocking statistics in Stop Acting Rich: only 16.5% of the millionaires surveyed by Stanley are “wine oriented” (meaning that they care about fine wine in more than a casual/passing way). Most shocking of all is that of the millionaires he surveyed “only 7 percent own a bottle of wine that cost more than $100.”

So who is buying all the good juice that flows out of Bordeaux, Napa, and Burgundy? Roberts speculates that it probably is not restaurants or investors.

Who is left? If you’re reading this blog you might look in the mirror. Roberts plausibly argues that it is wine geeks—you and me dear reader—who keep the great wineries in business.

And I confess—guilty. An expensive hobby no doubt, but it could be worse. I could have fallen in love with antique cars—a 1961 Ferrari 250 GT will set you back about $10 million—or skydiving at $300 per minute.

I get several hours of enjoyment out of a good bottle of wine which costs less than a good seat at a concert.