Corkonomics

The economics of wine production, collection, and vineyards

CorkonomicsThe economics of wine production, collection, and vineyards
The numbers
Vineyard land · Pauillac≈$2,798,250 a hectare▼ down 17% on 20232024Opening price · Château Lafite Rothschild 2025≈$376 a bottle▲ up 17% on the year beforeSold at auction · Romanée-Conti Grand Cru, DRC 2019$22,917 a bottleSotheby's, Sep 2026Cost to make one bottle · Burgundy grand cru (Pinot Noir)$48–283US duty on wine from · Canada+50%since Aug 2026Everyday bottle in a US shop$13.77 a litre▼ down 1.3% in a yearSep 2026Vineyard land · Margaux≈$1,567,020 a hectare▼ down 7% on 20232024Opening price · Château Cheval Blanc 2025≈$376 a bottle▲ up 22% on the year beforeSold at auction · La Tâche Grand Cru, DRC 2018$5,417 a bottleSotheby's, Sep 2026Cost to make one bottle · Champagne prestige cuvée$26–89US duty on wine from · Australia+12.5%since Jul 2026Vineyard land · Côte-Rôtie≈$1,511,055 a hectare▲ up 8% on 20232024Opening price · Château Mouton Rothschild 2025≈$336 a bottle▲ up 19% on the year beforeSold at auction · Richebourg Grand Cru, DRC 2012$3,542 a bottleSotheby's, Sep 2026Cost to make one bottle · Bordeaux classified growth (2nd–5th)$17–61US duty on wine from · New Zealand+12.5%since Jul 2026Vineyard land · Côte de Nuits grand cru≈$7,275,450 a hectare2019Opening price · Château Palmer 2025≈$268 a bottle▼ down 19% on the year beforeVineyard land · Pomerol≈$2,238,600 a hectare2023
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New to wine? Start with the short lessons, then look up any word you do not know.

Learn · Wine words · Your saved pages

Learn about wine

Short, friendly lessons. No jargon and no homework. Start anywhere.

A notebook, a glass of red wine, corks and grapes on a linen cloth

Start with the basics

Eight short lessons, three to five minutes each. Read them in order or jump to whatever you are curious about.

Learn the economics

Two longer tracks for anyone from about fifteen up: what it costs to make wine, and how the market for collectible wine works. Then test yourself with a short course.

All courses

The five types, at a glance

Every bottle in the shop is one of these. Here is how to tell them apart and where to start.

Read the short guide
A glass of red wine on a dark wooden table

Red

Start with Pinot Noir if you like things light, Merlot for something soft, Cabernet Sauvignon for bold.

Serve just below room temperature

 A glass of white wine on a sunlit stone table

White

Start with Riesling for something zingy, or Chardonnay for something rounder.

Serve chilled, straight from the fridge

 Two glasses of rosé on a picnic blanket

Rosé

Start with a pale, dry rosé from the south of France.

Serve well chilled

 A glass of sparkling wine with rising bubbles

Sparkling

Look for the word Brut on the label. It means dry.

Serve very cold

 A small glass of golden dessert wine with cheese and dried fruit

Sweet

Start with a late-harvest Riesling. Lovely with blue cheese.

Serve chilled, in a small glass

Then explore

  1. Grapes

    Twelve grapes, what each tastes like and how to say the name.

    Meet the grapes

  2. Regions

    Where wine comes from, and what each place is known for.

    See the regions

  3. Good years and bad

    A colour chart of every year, from difficult to exceptional.

    See the chart

  4. Wine words

    Tannin, terroir, brut. Short meanings in plain English.

    Look up a word

Ten quick questions

See how much has stuck. Every answer comes with a one-line explanation, and nobody is keeping score but you.

Two glasses of red wine side by side, one pale and one dark

Wine words on flashcards

Tap a card to turn it over.

All wine words

Curious about the money side?

Why one bottle costs ten and another a thousand. These go a little deeper, but still in plain language.

What a bottle costs to make

How to read a Corkonomics page

The basis labels, the numbers, and what each section of a wine or vintage page is telling you.

What CAGR, drawdown and volatility mean for wine

Three numbers from finance, explained for a bottle.

Release price, market price and the gap between them

Why a wine sold for $150 by its producer can trade at $600 a year later — and who captured the $450.

What the scarcity score means

One number from 0 to 100 that describes supply: how hard a wine-vintage is likely to be to find. It is not a rating of quality.

How wine auctions work

Hammer prices, buyer's premiums, seller's commissions, reserves and provenance — what the numbers in an auction result actually mean.

What en primeur means

Bordeaux's futures system: buying wine a year before it is bottled, why châteaux use it, and why it stopped working.

Storage, insurance and the cost of carrying a case

What it costs to hold wine for a decade, and why 'gross return' is the wrong number.

Counterfeits and authenticity

Why the most valuable wines are the most faked, how producers respond, and what a buyer can check.

Tax considerations, in brief

Wine is treated differently from shares in most tax systems. A general note, not advice.

Open the three price calculators

Where does the money go?

Pick a style of wine. The bar is our estimate of what it costs to make one bottle, piece by piece. Then set a shop price and see how much of it is the wine itself.

Cost is the high end of the model range; every input is sourced on the model page.

Cost to make—
Share of shelf price—
Everything else—

“Everything else” is land scarcity, brand, aging, distribution margins and demand — the economics of wine, not the cost of making it. See the model →

What is a bottle worth in twenty years?

Arithmetic on numbers you choose, not a real wine. Drag the sliders. The dark line is the gross value; the pale line is what you would actually keep after the buyer’s premium, storage and the seller’s commission.

The costs
Gross value—
What you keep—
Growth a year, after costs—
Years to break even—

Buy here, sell there

A real price series: the average price of a litre of table wine on the US shelf, every month since 1995, from the Bureau of Labor Statistics via FRED. Drag the two handles to choose when you buy and when you sell, and watch the change, the growth a year and the worst moment in between. The lesson: ordinary wine’s price creeps up with inflation and rarely falls — it is a grocery, not an asset.

Growth a year only counts for holds of a year or more; shorter spans show a simple change. FRED, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis APU0000720311

Change—
Growth a year—
Worst fall on the way—
Held—