Sour economy not impacting local wine sales

The sour economy may also be having an impact on the sale of fine wines. Some surveys show wine stores around the country are actually discounting high end wines but that doesn't appear to be happening in Rochester.
Dean Lucas is a wine drinker. He bought four bottles of wine today at Marketview Liquor. Two of them were $50 apiece. That's what many wine experts consider the start of high end wines. “There are some red wines that we drink that are $16-$17 a bottle, and those can be good for everyday wines. But if there's a special occasion or a weekend that we're kicking back we'll open up something a little nice.’
Ninety-percent of fine wines are reds and people are being choosy. “I think they're spending less for good quality wines.” Adam McNaney is a fine wine consultant at Marketview Liquor. “Now I see people grabbing maybe one or two bottles of these trophy wines as opposed to a case. So they're kind of buying smarter if you will.”
Century Pittsford Wines carries wines from the low end to the high end and customers all in between. Century founder Sherwood Deutsch is the area's top fine wine expert who has made countless wine buying trips to France. “The very high end wines, we're still selling them but not as much certainly as we sold maybe a year or two years ago.”
The world's leading wine company is Constellation Brands with headquarters in Victor. They confirmed today that the U.S. wine market is healthy and growing. But customers are turning away from luxury brands, wines that sell for $20 and up, in favor of premium brands between $8 and $11 a bottle.
And that has affected the company's bottom line. “Some of those people who were buying those very high end wines, those $100, $200, $300 and over, a lot of those people are going down, taking a step down. They say, Sherwood, what can I buy that's good, that you can offer me, but I don't want to spend all that much money because we all know the reason why.”
Sherwood Deutsch made the point that there's good wines being sold at every price range now from all over the world and you don't have to spend a lot of money to buy a good bottle of wine.