If you are like us, you are thinking about prices more this year than you did last year. I have watched with alarm as my favorite everyday wines have increased in price until they cost as much as special event wines.

I cannot bring myself to drink wine that I do not like, so I decided to try to find out who had the best wine prices in town. To keep the problem manageable, I selected a list of twenty-one wines. For the larger shops, this represents less than 0.5% of their available wines, but it will give us an indication of who has the best prices.

The wine shops and the wines surveyed

There are literally hundreds of places to buy a bottle of wine in Austin, so I started with the following six shops: Central Market on Lamar, Whole Foods on Lamar, Twin Liquor on Balcones, Grapevine Market, and the Austin Wine Merchant.

The survey is weighted toward my preference for red wines and included fourteen reds, five whites, and two sparklers. The wines included in the survey ranged in price from around $8 to $50.

The results are different whether you buy wine by the single bottle or by multiple bottles at once.

Lowest prices for buying single bottles of wine

The survey results for single bottle prices are shown in the Table 1 below. The lowest price observed for each wine is highlighted. If you take a quick look, you will see that Spec’s has the best price for 11 of the 21 bottles, or about 52% of the time. The 5% discount Spec’s gives for cash is a nice additional savings, but it does not change Spec’s’ price advantage. Of course, the other way to look at this is that just under 50% of the time, Spec’s did not offer the best price.

Table 1. Survey of Austin wine prices for single bottles (cash or credit card).

If you always buy your wine by the bottle, then Table 1 tells you what you need to know. But if you buy more than one bottle of wine, there are discounts that begin to effect where you get the best price in Austin.

Lowest prices for buying multiple bottles of wine

Twin Liquors has a discount program that starts with the purchase of two identical bottles of wine. For most bottles the discount is 15%, but for some wines the savings is about 25%! Additionally, most grocery stores have started giving a 10% discount when you buy six or more bottles at one time. Both Whole Foods and Central Market offer this discount.

Whole Foods even has a special collection of wine that it claims are offered at the best prices in town. When I surveyed the store they were offering Ridge Litton Springs at $28.88 a bottle, which is the best price that I’ve seen for the 2005.

At the Austin Wine Merchant you receive a 10% discount when you buy twelve or more bottles. If you purchase a case of a single wine you get a 15% discount.

(All of these merchants reserve the right to limit discounts on sale items.)

If you apply the available discounts to the wine prices in the survey, things change rather dramatically. Table 2 below shows the discounted prices available for the wines in the survey. Again, the lowest price is highlighted.

Table 2. Survey of Austin wine prices with multiple bottle discounts.

This table indicates that if you are going to buy more than one bottle of wine, it pays to shop around. When taking the case discounts into effect, Spec’s has the cheapest price for only two of the 21 bottles, or less than 10% of the time.

In fact, the Austin Wine Merchant offers the best prices if you buy in bulk, offering the best price for 7 of the wines. Grapevine Market had the best prices for 5 of the wines and Twin Liquors for 4. Whole Foods, Central Market, and Spec’s all tied for last, each having the lowest price only twice.

Leaving aside the specific wines for a second, this data suggests that you should shop around for any wine purchase of more than a single bottle. Perhaps surprisingly, if the smaller stores such as Twin Liquors or the Austin Wine Merchant carry a wine, it is generally cheaper to buy it from them in bulk when compared to the larger merchants in town.

No price comparison would be complete with mentioning Costco and Sam’s. Both of these discount distributors carry wine, and in general, if they sell a wine, it will be cheaper than the shops covered in this survey. One problem with shopping at the discount houses is that the selection that they have on hand is very fluid. Wines that were there on Monday might be gone forever on Tuesday. If, however, you are willing to be flexible, you could check out the wine prices at these stores.

We want to keep adding to this section, and we would like your help. If you spot a good price on a bottle of wine, email us or leave a comment and we will pass it on.

(I buy wine from all of these shops, but I must disclose a long-standing relationship with John Roenigk at the Austin Wine Merchant. I have been shopping with John for over 15 years, and I consider him a friend. However, all of the wine I get from the Austin Wine Merchant, I purchase. The price I pay for wine is the same price that you will pay if you shop there.)