Wine Tasting Fees

Originally, wine-tasting was a marketing function of wineries.  If the wine they made was good enough, it would sell on its own when presented to the consumer.  Then a number of party-happy folks from the San Francisco Bay Area learned you could visit Napa Valley and get partied up on wine for next to nothing … and on quality wine to boot!  So, nominal tasting fees were put in place to curb the party goers and save room at the tasting counter for actual customers.  Often, these tasting fees were returned to the customer upon purchase of wine.  Lately, it seems that profit-motivated wineries are now turning to the tasting fees themselves to make a substantial impact on the bottom line and driving up wine-tasting prices dramatically over the past decade.  Rather than a cost of marketing, wine-tasting has become a profit-center in the business of operating a tasting room.  Of course, this leads to more lavish tasting rooms sprouting up around the valley, but that is a point for another discussion.

Let’s look at the financials.  If the average cost per-bottle of wine on a tasting room’s menu is $50, and each bottle can pour 16 samples (at 1.5 ounces each pour), and each tasting flight consists of four wines, then the retail cost to taste those four wines is about $12.50.  Keep in mind that the winery has already made a substantial mark-up on the retail price of the wine, as evidenced by the discounts they offer:  20% off to wine-club members, 30% off to wine industry tradesmen, and 50% off to employees.  When I started visiting Napa Valley back in 2005, the tasting fee for this flight was on average $10 to $15.  Today, the tasting fee at many places for this same flight is about $20 to $25, which represents a mark-up on top of a mark-up.

At some wineries, this tasting fee is actually used to turn folks away.  They only want top-dollar clients coming into the tasting room and then prey on them with vertical tastings paired with gourmet hors’ devourers or designer desserts.  A few years back I tried to visit Quintessa Winery (without an appointment).  At the desk I was told they could accommodate me for a $65 tasting fee, which included a food pairing.  The math suggests that the retail price of the wine offered was less than $25; and for $60, I could enjoy an entire half-bottle of their wine without the tasting room’s pretense.  So, I passed on the opportunity, but I felt like they just didn’t want me (or anyone of ordinary financial means) to have access to tasting their wines.  They wanted to present an air of exclusivity, even though their wines are highly distributed across the country.  To be fair, the 2003 Quintessa Red Wine was an amazing wine in the half-bottle (not so much the 2005).


So, if money is something that you have to work for, and you choose to spend it on quality wines from Napa Valley, it pays to shop around, even for tasting.  Check the tasting fees on winery web sites before planning a visit, or a simple day trip for you and a good friend could end up costing more than $500 in tasting fees alone.  It is possible to plan a trip for two to four wineries for less than $50 if you look around.  And ask if the tasting fee is recovered with a purchase, especially if you find a wine you adore.