Ilja Gort reveals: this is what wine really costs
Are you buying a four-euro bottle of wine? The winegrower gets not even one euro for the bottle in your basket. And what can you expect from 0.75 liters of wine for 80 cents? Not much. Ilja Gort knows exactly how it works; he’ll calculate where the rest of your four euros goes.
If you pay four euros for a nice bottle of Chateau Huppeldepup, the winegrower only gets 80 cents of that. Conclusion: it can’t be particularly good wine. Sometimes you get lucky and end up with a tasty glass for that price, but more often it’s not much good. Wine that has nothing to do with wine, says Ilja Gort. And on top of that, with these kinds of mass-produced wines, you’re contributing to environmental pollution.
Spraying pesticides
It makes sense: if a winegrower earns so little per liter, they will do everything possible to produce as quickly and cheaply as possible. That means spraying pesticides against weeds and diseases, because working organically is labor-intensive and therefore more expensive; harvesting quickly and making wine as fast as possible, with as little effort as possible. In short: a glass of wine you wouldn’t even want to wash your hair with.
VAT, excise duty, packaging
Yet you paid four euros for your bottle of wine. Where does that money go if the winegrower only gets 80 cents of it? The VAT on that amount is 69 cents; the supermarket’s margin is 1.16 euros. You pay 66 cents in excise duty, and transport comes to 10 cents per bottle. The packaging costs around 60 cents, of which bottling – pouring the wine into the bottles – is the most expensive part: 20 cents per bottle. Bottle, label, cork, in a box, on a pallet: it all costs money.
How much does a bottle of wine cost? Now with the correct diagram http://t.co/Ih71f4CPjb pic.twitter.com/UCm26otaFC
— Ilja Gort (@iljagort) March 22, 2014
Average: 3.50 euros
OK, so this is a four-euro bottle. It’s not the most expensive wine at the liquor store or supermarket, but it’s nowhere near the cheapest either. The average Dutch person spends 3.50 euros on a bottle of wine, according to research firm Nielsen. Are you happy when you’ve found something drinkable for less than three euros? Think again about your find: no winegrower can start their tractor, prune their vineyard or pay a salary with that amount.
The leftovers
So what’s in your cheap bottle? You’re probably drinking the remnants of previous harvests: wine that is still in the large vats when the new harvest is approaching. Compare it to books in the bargain section, which have to make room for new titles in the warehouse. That leftover wine is sold incredibly cheaply and blended with other wine from sad winegrowers who couldn’t sell their wine this year. Ilja’s tip: choose better wine, pay an extra euro or two and, if possible, see whether you can buy organic wine. Or his, of course, because he isn’t sharing these facts for nothing.
