For The Love Of Port

Peter,

It is good to hear that you were willing to give it another try. I am not surprised you really enjoyed it. I don't go out on a limb with Madeira recommendations too often, but this is a no-brainer at that price. Besides, it should be really cheap there in SF, as the importer, B. Broadbent lives and works there. So no shipping = lower prices. Just for grins, what did the bottle cost you down there?

I just ordered a bottle of Broadbent 10 year from my local wine shop at $41.99. I was reading your original post on this thread, Roy, and saw you quoting prices on winesearcher in the 20's and 30's.

For the life of me I can't find a price less than $38. Is it possible that the price of this Madeira has gone up that much since October?

I'll post a TN when I get the bottle on Friday. This is something that can sit in a decanter for quite a while, right?

Mike.

Roy Hersh wrote:Just for grins, what did the bottle cost you down there?

With tax, $29.80 - somewhere around $27.50 before tax. This was at Beltramo's, in Menlo Park. (I'll have to find somewhere a bit closer to SF or Marin if I want a regular supplier.)

Beltramo's was all out of V Sattui California Madeira, unfortunately, just when I got interested in trying it.

Peter

kerrnel wrote:For the life of me I can't find a price less than $38. Is it possible that the price of this Madeira has gone up that much since October?

Prices on Madeira seem to vary a lot, even relative to the highly variable prices of wine in general. I believe this is due to the fact that Madeiras are carried by a very limited number of importers and distributors, especially non-MWC brands, and allocations are often limited. I've heard wine merchants openly bemoan the difficulty in constantly being able to get the same Madeiras they've previously carried.

Very often, you'll see Madeira being carried at one price for awhile, then suddenly a big price jump (way above mere inflation). I was getting Henriques 10-year-old Malmsey for $25/bottle for several years, only to have it disappear for a while, then turn up at another wine merchant in the same area for $35/bottle. Similarly with 20-year-old Moscatel de Setubal, that was going for $40-45/750ml bottle, then couldn't be found anywhere for awhile, and now its back at $30/375ml bottle.

At least in the Bay Area, we have the benefit of several importers being based right here, which keeps prices a bit lower than many other parts of the country. Checking Wine-Searcher.com, it seems like Los Angeles and New York also have good wine price and availability.

Peter

I guess that makes sense. I've certainly noticed that California retailers consistently have lower prices, but admittedly I haven't looked much at New York retailers, mostly because many don't ship to VA. Having said that, I could probably look closer at them since they're within a day's driving distance, whereas Cali is not. :)

I'll just keep looking around. Like most things, if I get on the right email lists from various wine shops, I'm sure someone is bound to advertise a cheaper price at some point. Just a matter of patience I suppose...

Mike.

I just ordered a bottle of Broadbent 10 year from my local wine shop at $41.99. I was reading your original post on this thread, Roy, and saw you quoting prices on winesearcher in the 20's and 30's.

For the life of me I can't find a price less than $38. Is it possible that the price of this Madeira has gone up that much since October?

I'll post a TN when I get the bottle on Friday. This is something that can sit in a decanter for quite a while, right?

Mike,

Please rest assured that I would not mislead you. I believe what has happened is that some of the retailers that had formerly listed their upper $20s-$30+ Broadbent Madeiras on http://www.winesearcher.com either sold out at that price or no longer list 'em. From Peter's post, it is clear that you can still find the Malmsey for under $30 as reported. For how long though?

Yes, the Broadbent 10 year old Malmsey can sit in a decanter for weeks if not months BUT I have never had that "problem" yet.

In early 2005 there were rumblings that were heard from the volanic island of Madeira all the way to the USA. Prices would be going up from many houses, especially on older Vintage dated Madeiras. If memory serves me well, the supplier of the Broadbent family of Madeiras was no exception. I will have Bartholomew give us some more insight into this topic.

Roy, I have no doubt that you would not mislead me about port or madeira! But, I know that realistically, market forces change. My question about the ability of the bottle price to go up that much was more disappointment than disbelief. The bit about the volcanic activity I can definitely see having some sort of affect.

That said, there appear to still be deals to be had out there, just perhaps not on the internet, but in offline stores. I just wish they were near me. The Virginia distributor I think listed it at $40 or something and my local wine shop got it for me at cost for them or just a smidge above, so I can't really complain about the service I got from the shop. They know me by name now, so maybe I can score some deals down the road...

It'll be interesting to hear Bart's comments on those rumblings!

I need to clean out my decanter, then will pop open this madeira and post a TN.

Mike.

I am so glad that you all like the more recent blend. Thanks for the nice comments.

On pricing, there are certain factors that must be held into consideration.

Firstly, retail mark-ups vary throughout the country from as low as 12% to 50% or even higher.

Secondly, it depends when the retailer purchased it.

Thirdly, as sales and popularity of Madeira increases, the price will, inevitably go up, because of it's limited supply. To put you in the picture, the total production of Madeira, excluding cooking Madeira, is just over 100,000 cs. There are individual Port Shippers who produce in excess of 1 million cases alone!

Finally, the one thing we must not overlook is the dollar. Someone mentioned inflation which is about 3% a year. However, the dollar is a different matter. At the peak, the Euro cost close to $.70 [70 to 80 cents to buy a Euro]. At the worst, it cost us over $1.34

You can do the mathmatics. Imagine, paying .64cents more on every dollar. It increase a $27 bottle to $44.28.

Some importers work on such big margins that they could subsidize the price and not raise the price to the extent that they had lost money on the dollar. In our case, we work on very small margins and we tried to absorb the price, thinking that the dollar would strengthen again. We lost money for three years and, to save our business, finally raised the price at one time, whereas some importers had gradually raised prices, over three years. The big jump in price cost us in sales but at least we were making money instead of losing money on every bottle we sold!

So, I aplogise for this state of economics. In retrospect, we should have raised prices every time the dollar changed.

If the wine is found inexpensively in some places, the chances are they bought the wine before the local distributor re-ordered at the higher price.

Hope this helps to explain wide pricing differences.

Bartholomew,


Thanks for providing further insight into the difficulties of importing. I learned my lesson when the So. African Rand went from 13:1 when I started up my importing and within 14 months was at 6:1. Ouch! Tough to meet the same price on the shelf, to say the least.

Then there are also freight differentials and all kinds of other dynamics that cause pricing to be different from state to state and in some places, county to county.

We appreciate your candor.

Thanks for the insight, Bart... Being from Canada I've seen similar pricing changes with exchange rates on many many products from the US. Having not really paid much attention to the US dollar versus the Euro, I hadn't considered that, but it certainly makes sense.

Thanks again!

Mike.