The Cost of Single Malt Scotch Versus Wine

Every once in a while I’ll have a conversation about the cost of whisky compared to wine.  I decided I’d try to do some actual calculations based on prices at my local shops.

I’ve created a Google spreadsheet (link below) with scotch and wine prices from three of my local shops: BevMo, K&L Wines (Redwood City), and Beltramos.  All three have online stores, so I collected the data from their web pages.  For Scotch, I collected all the prices they have listed.  For wine, I collected only red and white wine prices.  I then averaged the bottle prices and did some calculations.

Findings – Price per Glass

The bottom line: Assuming 5 glasses per wine bottle and 12 glasses for scotch bottle, the price per glass between wine and single malt is essentially equal.  This is especially the case with K&L Wines, whose average price per glass is only 4 cents apart between wine and scotch.  Bevmo skews toward higher priced scotch, and Beltramos skews towards higher priced wine.

Caveat:  All these numbers include the higher end bottles, although I have trimmer the extremely high and extremely low priced bottles.

The Numbers

  • Bevmo Scotch vs Wine
    • price per bottle: $60.41 vs $18.66
    • price per glass: $5.03 vs $3.73
    • prices collected: 183 vs 1810
  • K&L Scotch vs Wine
    • price per bottle: $120.28 vs $49.89
    • price per glass: $10.02 vs $9.98
    • prices collected: 168 vs 2726
  • Beltramos Scotch vs Wine
    • price per bottle: $103.26 vs $61.82
    • price per glass: $8.61 vs $12.36
    • prices collected: 173 vs 1901

Notable Things

  • All three stores have about 175 different bottles of scotch, and about 2000 bottles of wine.
  • Bevmo’s average price is lowest, most likely because they carry a lot of the “cheap stuff”.
  • K&L’s average glass price for scotch and wine is essentially the same (almost exactly $10).
  • K&L Wines’ average scotch and wine prices are twice that of Bevmo ($120 vs $60 for scotch, $49 vs $18 for wine).  This makes sense, as K&L is most likely stocking a lot of higher quality goods.
  • Bevmo stocks higher priced scotch than wine (~34% more per glass), and Beltramo’s is the opposite – their wine is a higher price (~30% more per glass).
  • Interestingly Beltramos has a higher wine price than K&L.  Beltramos may be stocking more high-priced wine than anyone, perhaps.

Check out the spreadsheet here.

 

Leave a comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *