In Chile (the #1 wine exporter in the 🌎) one regular bottle costs the same as two packages of spaghetti or a package of rice. Everybody drinks wine at their meals, from the poorer to the richest. I’ve heard in America it is not like that. Is it really a Rich’s luxury?

26 comments

  2. No, poor people drink wine too, just not usually the top shelf stuff. My local grocery store has bottles like 5 or 6 dollars.

  3. Nah, the price ranges from super cheap, like a couple bucks, to super expensive. We also produce a lot of wine in California though, so it might be different in other places.

  4. What kind of quality are you looking for? You can easily find something in the $10 range, or $250. Just depends on what you want

  6. I feel like wine prices get exaggerated, but they are significantly more expensive than what I saw in Europe. The majority of our wine that’s $10 or less is absolutely terrible, but that seemed to be fine for table wine in Europe.

    That being said I was on vacation so they could be some serious rose colored glasses

  7. Generally wine is seen as a fancier drink so it isn’t drank as often as beer or liquors at home. There are people who drink it regularly and people who drink it the most of all types of alcohol though.

    I personally keep a collection of about 25-30 bottles at a time and drink it about once or twice a month for dinner.

    There are tons of options for prices, quality, and origin for some of the US. I am in a small city and could buy all sorts of wine from Chile. You can get bottles of all types from anywhere from $5-$200.

  8. I can get 2 pounds of spaghetti for 2 dollars or less if it’s on sale. I can’t get a bottle of wine for that price here at all. On a separate note one of the best pinot noir’s I’ve ever had came from Chile

  9. Look up “two buck Chuck”. It got it’s name because it used to sell for $1.99. I haven’t checked the price in years but I believe it is now $2.99.

  11. A quick google search reports to me that a 5 liter box of wine can be obtained for $15. Obviously the quality is not very good but there is, generally, plenty of inexpensive wine here in the US.

  15. It’s cheaper in wine-growing regions and more expensive in places where it must be shipped in.

  16. Just tell me what it costs there instead of some vague comparison to rice and spaghetti.

    For example: I can buy wine that costs $3 USD. I regularly buy $20 bottles.

  17. Like many consumer goods, the imported products are much more expensive than in their country of origin, while domestic products are comparatively cheap. As an example, a wine that I routinely bought in Italy for €1 per bottle is about $15 per bottle here. Meanwhile, you can find acceptable American wines for as little as $4, and I’ve seen bottles of (admittedly not very good) American wines for $1.50.

  18. Speaking as an American, I think what most of the folks in this thread are missing is HOW CHEAP decent wine is in wine drinking countries. In Italy a glass of decent wine was cheaper than a soft drink at restaurants and I assume bottles are similarly cheap.

    You can get a middle of the road “decent” bottle of wine in a number of countries for the prices of our lowest shelf awful wine in the US.

    Now to OP’s question. Why?

    I do not know the answer to this question but I wish it were not so. I would drink more wine with meals but when a bottle is 15-20 dollars for what is “average at best and not great at worst”…..well it begins to add up.

    I think most Americans find a couple of brand/year combos in the cheap range that are pretty good but in wine drinking countries they don’t have to hunt and peck at that price point. They have lots of options at that price point or cheaper.

  19. Very few people drink wine at every meal. Especially poorer people, but most people in general. It’s not a general custom for most in America.

  20. Are you sure it’s the #1 exporter? Chile’s exports amount to roughly a third of Italy’s.

  21. Chile is quite a ways from being the #1 exporter in the world, far behind France, which is the actual #1. All that said, the US produces *lots* of wine, being the #4 wine producer in the world, we just don’t export so much of it. We have world class wineries all over the country and you can spend as much or as little as you’d like on a bottle of wine. It is by no means a “rich man’s drink.”

  22. I like chilean wine, it’s good and inexpensive. my favorite is still a nice CA zinfandel tho

  24. I think it’s likely due to sin taxes and that sort of thing. If you want less of something, Econ 101 says lay a tax on it. When nobody can successfully argue that they want MORE drunkenness, and politicians want money…

    For example, in my state, there’s an extra tax on all alcohol. It was set over 90 years ago to pay for rebuilding after a terrible flood nearly destroyed an entire town. That town’s been rebuilt 2 or 3 times since then, IIRC, but the tax has never gone away…

  25. Kinda. The main difference is that a $5 bottle of wine in Chile or Italy or France is about $20 in the states, more or less. It’s not that the US doesn’t have cheap wine, it’s that the good wine is usually pricey and the cheap wine is usually shit. Cheap wine here in Italy isn’t great, but it isn’t shit (unless it’s Tavernello, but that’s what you get for getting wine in a box). I love Refosco and I get the cheapo one at the grocery store for 5-6 euros or so, but it’s head and shoulders above a $5 wine in the US.

    Also, Americans tend to treat wine as if it’s a status symbol or something for a special occasion rather than just something you drink with lunch and/or dinner every day. The approach is different, and marketing has taken full advantage of that.

    That said, Aldi has pretty passable wine for dirt cheap, so there are always exceptions. It’s ridiculously cheap here (like 2 euros), but I assume it’s similar in the states since the same companies are usually under contract.

  26. For reference that would be about $3 for a bottle.

    That’s about 1/4 the price for “average” wine.

    You can find cheaper and obviously much more expensive, but if you go into the wine section of a store most bottles will be in the $10-$15 range.

    That being said, drinking a bottle of wine with a meal is reserved for people who drink a lot by American standards, unless it’s split between two or three people.

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