I just got the Flatiron 2020 offer and it seems to me the prices went way up this year. For instance, I bought the 2019 Graacher H Kabinett from them for 32 bucks. This year it’s 44. Seems that way across the board. Pretty large jump.
There’s been couple of places somewhat under the Flatiron offer, but overall that’s been the rough increase across the board from all US sources this year.
I thought it might be interesting to pull some old pricing from the UK importer, in the UK most people buy direct from the importer (who doesn’t have a retail store but sells direct to customers).
‘A lot’ was perhaps poor wording on my part. But I’ve discussed this several times with some of the top Mosel growers. I think put simply, you can do almost nothing and pick Spatlese / Auslese level grapes in one big pass, of course for GK and up it gets harder.
One told me the reason that they just charge more as you go up the hierarchy was so as not to confuse the customers.
Having ‘helped’ pick Kabinett grapes before, we ended up discarding a reasonable amount of lightly botrytised grapes, which took time and meant they ended up on the floor. However this was for a rather expensive Kabi!
If Kabinett started costing more than the higher levels, that would be even worse (for me). I generally like that level better as its more flexible for me.