Many wines get barrel-aged. "We use new French oak, which is the most expensive," Castorina said of Gallo. One of Gallo's top-end wines would go into the barrel first, with the barrel being used subsequently for less expensive wines.
To allow them to mature and gain complexity, the better wines are then aged in the bottle, from a few months to several years. That means warehousing is needed.
All these factors combine to produce a higher quality wine. And quality is a big factor in pricing.
In determining a price for a debut vintage, Anderson said, "You go out and see what the wine compares to in terms of the characteristics of the wine," and price it accordingly. In other words, if your wine compares favorably with Chateau Lafite Rothschild, you're not going to price it along the lines of Mogen David.
If that bottle on your table came from abroad, it was handled by an importer. Stacole Fine Wines of Boca Raton is an importer that also distributes in Florida. The company sold about 130,000 cases of wine last year, according to Michael Rugers, Stacole's product development and educational manager.
"There are certain margins you have to make. Usually, that's around 30 percent," Rugers said. "You have to pay commissions to salespeople, administrative costs and shipping costs."
The last stop is the retailer, who has the final say on pricing. Leading the way nationally in sales are monster membership warehouses such as Costco and Sam's Club. Their combined wine sales in the United States last year was about $1-billion, according to Wine Enthusiast magazine. Grocery store chains such as Publix also sell a lot of wine.
But independent shops operate differently.
"Generally, dealing with fine wine, grocery stores deal with set margins and wines that are made in the hundreds of thousands of cases. That's big business, that's bulk business," said Bob Sprentall, owner of B-21 in Tarpon Springs, which stocks more than 3,500 wines.
At B-21, "There's not a standard margin," Sprentall said of his pricing. "It's all about supply and demand.
"The marketplace dictates what you can sell wine for. Simple supply and demand."
Demand can be hugely affected by what wine critics say about a bottle or an entire vintage. "Scoring by the Wine Spectator and (Robert) Parker affects pricing," Sprentall said.
Parker, a Maryland lawyer and wine lover, is now the mostfamous American wine author and critic, known for his love of Bordeaux, iconoclasm and tough judgments of wine on a 100 point scale published in his influential newsletter, the Wine Advocate.
Winemaker Anderson said educating consumers on what it actually takes to produce wine can only help the industry. He mentioned a program where consumers were invited to Conn Valley Vineyards to observe and participate in making wine. Anderson recalled that after being exposed to the process, one participant passed along what surely had to be magic words to the winemaker's ears:
"He said, "I'll never complain about the price of a bottle of wine again.' "
