Wine Price: No Impact on Midwest Tasting Room Sales
A team of researchers, led by Professor Bill Gartner from the University of Minnesota, has found that the price of wine in Midwest winery tasting rooms does not impact on sales. The research particularly applies to farm wineries in rural areas.
Gartner surveyed hundreds of wineries in the Midwest and northern USA as part of an ongoing study by a consortium of universities for the Northern Grapes Project (NGP). The NGP involves identifying strategies to support sustainable winery development across the region. Preliminary findings were released publicly by Gartner during an NGP webinar last month.
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‘We’re talking anywhere from $9 a bottle to probably upwards of $20 a bottle,” said the applied economics professor. ‘At winery tasting rooms, there’s a lot of costs associated with simply going. Tourists are going to be traveling, so it’s not only a time cost, it’s an expense cost; the fuel, the meals and whatever else,” he added. ‘So the difference between a $12 bottle of wine and a $14, $15 bottle of wine, it’s really not going to show up when you calculate the percentage of that cost compared to the total cost of the visit to the winery.”
‘People have already made a financial commitment to being there,” he added. ‘The experience is the important thing, being at the winery [and] tasting the wine.”
Publications detailing the research by Dr. Gartner and his team can be found on the NGP website by clicking here.
