What A Waste, He Wined

Pour Results: $145 Million of Wine, Down the Drain

One of the world's biggest vintners has a roaring hangover from poor U.S. sales, leading it to destroy thousands of gallons of wine...

Treasury Wine Estates Ltd. - whose brands range from the mass-market, U.S.-made Beringer up to $1,000-a-bottle Penfolds Grange from Australia - said it would book a charge of 160 million Australian dollars (US$145 million) against its U.S. business for the fiscal year that ended June 30.

Penfolds was one of the vineyards we visited on our recent Australia trip. If I'd known they wanted to get rid of that wine I'd have suggested a few alternatives.

The vintner relies heavily on sales of less-expensive labels in the U.S., the world's biggest wine market. Treasury Wine said Monday it had overestimated U.S. demand in the past year, forcing it to discount or destroy older wines that had passed their drink-by date.

I consume stuff in the fridge that's past it's use-by date all the time. I think I could do the same with wine.

The article goes on to provide a lot of semi-interesting information about volume and trends of wine sales. The only one worth repeating here is the figure below.

Since most of the wine I buy is in the $10-15 per bottle range, I figure I'm in the top 25% of wine drinkers. I guess that makes me a wine snob.