Fine wine defies downturn as US$250-plus bottles keep selling

While mainstream wine sales remain under pressure, demand for highly allocated and ultra-premium bottles continues to hold firm. Data suggests the top end of the market is proving far more resilient, even as consumers trade down elsewhere. Kathleen Willcox reports.

Persistently flagging sales, the rise of THC, and health concerns. This unholy trinity has been haunting wine for years now—we’ve all read the headlines, written the story, lived the tale. And yet, when it comes to small-production, highly allocated, and vertiginously priced wines, the yada yada doesn’t seem to apply.

As sales of wine overall continue to contract, premium wine may help set the stage for the recovery so many experts are beginning to quietly forecast.

Silicon Valley Bank Wine Division’s Rob McMillan, for one, writes in his perennially anticipated and dreaded State of the U.S. Wine Industry Report that “for all the headwinds, we are of the belief that the worst of the downturn is behind us.”

And Liv-ex’s 2025 in Review report noted that its major indices had risen consistently since September of 2025, with no signs of slowdown, and predictions that the trend will continue.

High-end Napa Cabernet Sauvignon is a perfect case in point of the current market dichotomy: Cabernet shipments accounted for 32% of the $3.4 billion direct to consumer (DTC) wine market in the U.S., with shipments of Cabernet with an average price of $200 or more growing 14% by value and 10% by volume, according to data from WineBusiness Analytics and Sovos ShipCompliant.

Meanwhile, total shipment volume of Cabernet priced at less than $60 a bottle declined -17% in the past 12 months.

Mikaela Haynes, the vice president of sales, marketing and operations at the top rare wine shop Benchmark Wine Group, says that there are a handful of notable top performers in their stable of producers headed to wholesalers, collectors and top restaurants.

“Within the $200 to $300 range, performance has been led by classic Napa Valley producers such as Joseph Phelps and Shafer, alongside a noticeable uptick in California cult wines, including Sine Qua Non,” Haynes says. “In Bordeaux, demand has been strongest for Second and Fifth Growths that offer strong pedigree and value relative to First Growth pricing.”

In the $300-$600 tier, sales were dominated by cult Napa producers like Bond, Colgin and Hundred Acre, Haynes said, alongside momentum for First Growths like Haut-Brion and Mouton Rothschild, and Burgundy Grand Cru like Louis Jadot and Joseph Drouhin.

At the tippety-top, ultra-luxury wines priced at $10,000 or more a bottle grew 28% year over year.

Choosier purchases

It’s a buyer’s market. $500 and $10,000 bottles of wine might be selling well, but only well-provenanced and reputable $500 and $10,000 bottles.

For lines like the $365 Insignia, from Napa’s Joseph Phelps Vineyards, or the extremely limited edition $425 Backus, executive chairman and president David Pearson says there has been a historic interest this year.

“We make just enough of Insignia to make it available on the wider market,” Pearson says. “It’s always a blend of between 80 and 100 lots, which requires a lot of work, so scaling up beyond 10,000 cases would mean compromising quality. We’ve had incredible interest this year, and almost half of the markets it’s being sold in hadn’t offered it before or in many years.”

In response to the increased interest in high-end Napa wines, Joseph Phelps will offer the typically DTC-exclusive Backus to select clients this year.

“It’s easy to price a Napa wine at $300 or more a bottle, but that doesn’t mean that anyone will want it,” Pearson says. “The wines that are selling well at that price point have earned their stripes.”

Other producers echo Pearson’s observation, pointing to a highly educated, extremely selective group of well-funded collectors who have the ways and means to curate blue-chip collections.

Luxury champagne and cult status brands hold ground

Edouard Cossy, global director of Laurent-Perrier, points to the house’s prestige cuvée Grand Siècle as an example of a complex, intellectual Champagne that has achieved cult status in recent decades.

It was developed, he says, to “recreate what Nature alone will never give us, the perfect year,” through “the art of blending which achieves a level of perfection greater than any single year.” The bottles start at $329 per bottle, and soar to $1,999.99 for a Magnum of Les Réserves.

Cossy notes that this “differentiating concept” of an elevated blend has sold well, especially in the U.S., with the U.K., Japan and France nipping at its heels.

“It was clearly the wine connoisseurs who first embraced our concept and message, appreciating its complexity and balance,” Cossy says. “But over time, we have also observed a growing overlap with high-end consumers who may not be experts, but are driven by the desire to experience wines defined by authenticity, savoir-faire, and time.”

Collectors chase the best barrels

At Alexander Valley’s Skipstone Wine, where prices start at $90, general manager Brian Ball says that their best-sellers are $400, and a reflection of a powerful cohort’s desire to drink only the best.

“Our top wines are our Luka’s Blend Cabernet Franc and our Sofia’s Vineyard Cabernet Sauvignon [$400 each], both of which are selections made by winemaker Laura Jones of the finest barrels of those respective varieties,” Bell says. “Our customers who want the best know that our strict selection process for what makes it into our top wines means they are getting something very special.”

Justin Ennis, winemaker at Sonoma’s Freestone Vineyards, which offers small-production site-specific and clonally focused Pinot Noirs in the $225 Proem, credits the fact that “Pinot lovers, and I include myself here, are really a bunch of nerds.”

Those big-spending nerds comb promising hoods in California for just such highly specific, meticulously grown and crafted iterations of Pinot, and stock up.

Brian Hurley, assistant winemaker at Stewart Cellars in Yountville, concurs.

“We have found an incredible following for our NOMAD line, which features all vineyard-designate wines,” Hurley says, explaining that the $300 bottlings fulfil a deep desire among a certain sector of the wine community to taste every offering in California of Cabernet Sauvignon and Pinot Noir grown in highly allocated vineyards.

“We have collectors who say they buy every bottle of Cabernet from Dr Crane made every year,” Hurley says. “It’s a small, but powerful sector of the wine market.”

Investing in categories, drinking now

The purpose behind the acquisition is increasingly across the map. Drink now? Cellar for later? Increasingly, the answer is: both, for buyers of all ages.

The limited production of Moone Tsai Vineyards’ $500 LEONIDAS Cabernet Sauvignon sold out immediately.

“We were deeply encouraged by the response,” says MaryAnn Tsai, co-founder of the Napa winery Moone Tsai, alongside her husband, Larry. “Demand within our core audience has proven relatively price-inelastic. While broader market pressures are real, our experience reflects the dynamics of a K-shaped economy, where consumers continue to invest in categories they deeply value. For collectors at this level, purchase decisions are driven less by short-term economic sentiment and more by quality, scarcity, and long-term relationships with producers.”

Demographically, their core audience has traditionally been Baby Boomers and Gen X, Larry says.

“But we are increasingly seeing Gen Y and early Millennial wine drinkers entering this tier, particularly those who are highly informed, brand-agnostic, and motivated by authenticity and provenance rather than status alone,” he says, adding that most of their wines are purchased for enjoying upon their release, but some will intentionally cellar their most limited Cabernet Sauvignons.

Premium tiers outperform entry-level wines

At Grgich Hills Estate in Napa, president and CEO Violet Grgich reports “more of a slowdown in lower-priced wines,” which start at $36, but strong growth for their Legacy Tier, which includes Paradise Block Cabernet Sauvignon, priced at $295.

Like the Tsais, Grgich is noticing an uptick in “new, younger consumers that want to experience these. Interestingly, Grgich also says that a number of their most loyal buyers are increasingly seeking aged wine—but are relying on the winery to have done the patient ageing work for them.

“We are seeing an increase in sales of our library vintages that are ready to drink now versus wines that should be cellared,” Grgich says.

Haynes, at Benchmark, says that their buyers are “just as likely to be buying something special to enjoy with dinner that night” as they are with plans to cellar it for five or more years. “We see strength in the rare wine market. In many cases, the line between investor and consumer is blurred as many buyers collect with the intent to consume some and sell some. The high end of the market often leads the rest of the market out of downturns, as we hopefully are seeing now.”

What it means for the wider wine industry

Are these high-priced top-performers a sign of better times to come for the entire industry? Or are they just more proof that success in the wine business is increasingly reliant on a very small proportion of the drinking populace, one with almost unlimited disposable income, but a very particular palate that precludes the success of the vast majority of the wine industry? (Read, any producers with wines priced at $200 or less?)

We’ll be observing and analysing—watch this space.

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