A Message from ukwineclub
HOW MUCH SHOULD WE CHARGE? |
The price of a bottle of wine keeps rising. From the vineyard to the tax man, costs increase. How should we react – cut quality or increase our charges?
At the Central London Wine Society, we have never been the cheapest club – our usual minimum price for a tasting is now £30, with premium tastings (about a third of meetings) priced at £50 or £60. If we have food, that adds another £10 or so. Our normal limit for meetings is 17 members, to get reasonable portions of each wine (usually nine or ten).
How have our members reacted? The premium meetings are consistently popular, partly because members bring very good wines from their own cellars and norm ally only charge the original cost of the wine. These meetings concentrate on mature wine from classic areas – this year we have Burgundy, Bordeaux, Rioja, Vintage Port and Sparkling Wines. The ‘ordinary’ meetings might have wines from lesser known or less expensive regions, especially in the new world, to give members ideas of what they might be drinking or collecting for the future. The price point of the wines is around £25. These meetings can be a rather harder sell than the premium ones.
Many clubs seem to fear that raising prices and getting better wine would put off too many potential tasters: this may not be the case.
