I was thinking the other day about your astute observations on the pricing of wines in the retail markets of the world. Another whole area of interest to me, that seems to have the same type of reasoning applied to pricing, is in the area of wine prices in restaurants. Now, when you think about it, this does make sense.
Restaurants buy wine at wholesale, just like retail stores do.
However, in the USA, they triple the wholesale cost, or double the retail cost, to determine the price on the wine list. In Italy that is not the case. There, the price is often equal to our retail price, or less, here in the States. I can recall ordering reserve wines, Brunellos, off the wine list in Italy, for less than our cost retail at home. Import cost alone does not make up for this difference.