How to read a Corkonomics page

The labels

Reported: a producer, a government agency or a named publication said so, and the source is cited. Observed: a price seen on a dated day from a named seller — an asking price, a hammer price or a transaction. Estimated: inferred from evidence with a stated method. Modeled: the output of a Corkonomics model with published inputs, like the production-cost estimate. Corkonomics calculation: arithmetic on numbers already on the page — a return, a CAGR, a multiple. Editorial: an assessment by editors, like a vintage's character. Corkonomics holds no secondary-market prices, so no page states what a bottle is worth today; when a licensed price feed is added, those figures will carry the Observed label.

A wine page

The top tells you who makes it, where and how much of it exists. The vintage table is the core: one row per year with how the year was rated, the release price where a named publication reported it, and the scarcity estimate. Below that, the release-price chart where two or more prices exist, the cost model, comparable wines and the sources.

A vintage page

One year of one wine. The conditions section records how the year was rated, what the growing season was like and what is known about production and the release price; the cost section shows Corkonomics' modeled cost of making a bottle, line by line; the comparison tables set the year beside the wine's other vintages and beside comparable wines from the same year.

What '—' means

A dash always comes with a reason: not published, not recorded, needs more observations. Corkonomics does not fill gaps with guesses. If a producer has never published its production, the page says so rather than inventing a number.