Summer 2022 Princess Wine by the Bottle List Analysis

[Steelers36]

I have periodically updated a spreadsheet I developed some years ago to record and compare Princess wines to what it would cost to buy at retail, and pay the corkage.  I never did finish the work last year and now we have all new pricing with the advent of Premier Fare option.  Many have commented on the jump in wine prices and it has seemed more unjustified and to simply create an upper crust of wines out of what they have on offer.  I found the list unchanged in many respects from last year - dropped a few; added a few.  Other than the really high-end material, prices have jumped quite high in some cases.  Foe example, the Chateau Petrus is still at the old price (but who needs a $6,000 bottle of wine with cruise ship cuisine anyway?).

 

I am attaching both Excel and PDF formats.  See the notes at the bottom of page 4 on prices.  Most prices are based on Total Wine retail in FLL, or similar locations.  A small number are not to be found in the USA these days (if they ever were).  Of significance is Princess does not list the vintage year of any wine and when checking retail, it's whatever is offered for sale.  So, they may not match. 

 

And the idea is not to just go and buy the wines that Princess sells and bring them on board.  The idea is to have a sense or evaluate if it is financially worth it to acquire your own wine, bring it on board and pay the corkage.  The spreadsheet assumes corkage is paid on every bottle, whereas this is not always the case in practice.  Your cost is retail price, plus sales tax (I use 7%), plus $20 corkage.  Princess price is the menu price, plus 18% gratuity. 

 

Even if you decide to buy wine on board, the analysis can let you know which wines are offered on board at closest to retail pricing.  Perhaps it helps avoid paying $60 for a $15 bottle - but such a thing is more common now with the new pricing.  And it can be almost impossible not to feel ripped off on board. 

 

Finally, this is not a WBTG analysis.  Let's just say the wines from the list that are also offered BTG have the bottle price level reflected in the per-glass pricing.  I did take a look at the wines included in Premier and they are from bottles included in the main wine list.  I also looked at the Plus offerings.  These are mostly circa-$7/btl wines being offered at $43 price point or $10/glass.  A lot of money for plonk.  I did not go further or bother including this bunch on the wine list attached.  Suffice to say, you could spend up to $28.70 for bottles of wine at Total Wine and be no worse than your cost on board.  Even the non-vinophile can do better with that price range limit than something sold for $7 at retail.  Enough said as this information is targeted more to the folks who enjoy wine and want to have decent or quality wines they like at a good value and that doesn't generally intersect with what Princess is offering now.  Not long ago, Princess got rid of a lot of junk and improved the wine list.  Now I guess they are back with it, having dumbed down the Plus offerings and attempting to move people up to Premier.  Good luck to them - I am going to stick with BYOW whenever possible.

 

Hope many of you find it at least interesting to peruse if not find it useful.

 

 

Princess Wine List - 2022-Summer.xlsx Princess Wine List - 2022-Summer.pdf

Edited August 16, 2022 by Steelers36

[cjpj]

Thanks for putting that together.  Very helpful.

[Rina's Mom]

Wow!  Thank you very much!

[HaveDogWillTravel]

I’m glad you moved this to its own thread. Thanks again for all your work. 

[PacnGoNow]

9 hours ago, Steelers36 said:

I have periodically updated a spreadsheet I developed some years ago to record and compare Princess wines to what it would cost to buy at retail, and pay the corkage.  I never did finish the work last year and now we have all new pricing with the advent of Premier Fare option.  Many have commented on the jump in wine prices and it has seemed more unjustified and to simply create an upper crust of wines out of what they have on offer.  I found the list unchanged in many respects from last year - dropped a few; added a few.  Other than the really high-end material, prices have jumped quite high in some cases.  Foe example, the Chateau Petrus is still at the old price (but who needs a $6,000 bottle of wine with cruise ship cuisine anyway?).

 

I am attaching both Excel and PDF formats.  See the notes at the bottom of page 4 on prices.  Most prices are based on Total Wine retail in FLL, or similar locations.  A small number are not to be found in the USA these days (if they ever were).  Of significance is Princess does not list the vintage year of any wine and when checking retail, it's whatever is offered for sale.  So, they may not match. 

 

And the idea is not to just go and buy the wines that Princess sells and bring them on board.  The idea is to have a sense or evaluate if it is financially worth it to acquire your own wine, bring it on board and pay the corkage.  The spreadsheet assumes corkage is paid on every bottle, whereas this is not always the case in practice.  Your cost is retail price, plus sales tax (I use 7%), plus $20 corkage.  Princess price is the menu price, plus 18% gratuity. 

 

Even if you decide to buy wine on board, the analysis can let you know which wines are offered on board at closest to retail pricing.  Perhaps it helps avoid paying $60 for a $15 bottle - but such a thing is more common now with the new pricing.  And it can be almost impossible not to feel ripped off on board. 

 

Finally, this is not a WBTG analysis.  Let's just say the wines from the list that are also offered BTG have the bottle price level reflected in the per-glass pricing.  I did take a look at the wines included in Premier and they are from bottles included in the main wine list.  I also looked at the Plus offerings.  These are mostly circa-$7/btl wines being offered at $43 price point or $10/glass.  A lot of money for plonk.  I did not go further or bother including this bunch on the wine list attached.  Suffice to say, you could spend up to $28.70 for bottles of wine at Total Wine and be no worse than your cost on board.  Even the non-vinophile can do better with that price range limit than something sold for $7 at retail.  Enough said as this information is targeted more to the folks who enjoy wine and want to have decent or quality wines they like at a good value and that doesn't generally intersect with what Princess is offering now.  Not long ago, Princess got rid of a lot of junk and improved the wine list.  Now I guess they are back with it, having dumbed down the Plus offerings and attempting to move people up to Premier.  Good luck to them - I am going to stick with BYOW whenever possible.

 

Hope many of you find it at least interesting to peruse if not find it useful.

 

 

Princess Wine List - 2022-Summer.xlsx 31.37 kB · 15 downloads Princess Wine List - 2022-Summer.pdf 209.09 kB · 19 downloads

Awesome!  Thank you so much!

[loge23]

I recall your earlier spreadsheet and used it well!

You continue to be a "go-to" for credible wine/spirits info on the line, and it is much appreciated!

 

[paradiselivin1]

Nice! Thanks for putting this together and sharing.

[donaldsc]

As a followup to your excellent spreadsheet - I calculated that the average markup was 1.52.   I also sorted the list by the retail cost of the wine and it appears that there is a correlation between markup and the cost of the wine in that the more expensive wines appear to have a lower markup.  This isn't surprising as the corkage fee is a fixed value and the dollar cost of the markup depends upon the cost of the wine.

 

I have always believed on the basic of no hard evidence that based purely on value you should be buying expensive and not inexpensive wine on the ship. Your data appears to show that this is true.  

 

Thanks for the work.  It is fascinating what you can do with a good data set.

 

DON

[jwattle]

@Steelers36 Great work! Does this include the 25% off if you have the Plus or Premier? 🙂

[Thrak]

Some of these prices are insane. Princess charges an incredible amount for inexpensive wines. Here is one egregious example from the spreadsheet:

 

Etude Lyric Pinot Noir

Retail Price: $17

Princess Price: $80

 

Princess Price with gratuity: $94.40

Retail Price (including Tax and $20 corkage): $38.19

 

Amount you save if you bring your own and pay the corkage: $56.21

 

This is what is commonly known as "highway robbery".

 

 

[donaldsc]

26 minutes ago, jwattle said:

@Steelers36 Great work! Does this include the 25% off if you have the Plus or Premier? 🙂

 

If it doesn't you could open the Excel file and save it to your PC.  Then modify the Excel files to do what you want it to do.  That is what I did when I calculated the markup and then sorted the results by the retail price of the wine.  Excel is a very versatile way of sorting or investigating data.

 

I don't know exactly what the Plus or Premier is as I have not sailed on Princess for years but remember that if the cost of the Plus / Premier plans are a fixed cost you have to amortize the fixed costs over the number of bottles you plan to buy.  This means that the apparently fixed cost will actually be a variable cost.

 

DON

[Steelers36]

5 minutes ago, jwattle said:

@Steelers36 Great work! Does this include the 25% off if you have the Plus or Premier? 🙂

No.

 

I believe I have considered this before.  Let's say you had the Plus for drinks and beverages, excluding wine.  You could then be thinking something like a person who books Standard.  This spreadsheet concept is really more for someone who is booking Standard, but likes to drink wine.  I must say, it's a pretty sad situation to be on Plus and drink WBTG without incurring an up-charge. 

 

In order to have a revised price difference, you could add another "Savings" column with this formula: 

=ROUND((0.75 * E7) * 1.18, 2) - I7

 

I did this for fun and of course there is reduced savings - and in some cases the on board discounted cost is better than retail + corkage.

 

I have retail pricing listed for 135 bottles.  After applying 25% off, 96 are still cheaper as BYOW, while 38 labels are better on board.  As the spreadsheet sits - paying menu prices - there are only 5 labels that are better to simply buy on board.  Note this is one short since one label had no price on the Princess menu provided, so IDK the on-board cost. 

 

That said, guess what those 5 labels are:

 

Dom Perignon = $222 (older stock or do they get a really good deal???)

Prunotto Barolo = $55 (could be older stock???)

Chapoutier Chateauneuf du Pape = $63 

Chappellet Merlot = $58

Legende Dom Barons de Rothschild = $53

 

 

In summary, I had always considered if I did book Plus fare, that I wouldn't worry about bringing on wine - and I think that holds since there are a lot more to choose from in terms of value if you get 25% off.  For me, the $50/pp/day just isn't worth it.  Our fixed costs are usually $39/day, leaving $61/day for us to spend on bar tabs.  With ports and having a mini-bar, our level of drinking just doesn't work on a typical voyage.  So, the wine is all about what do I need to pay on board versus what can I get for myself?

 

[XBGuy]

2 minutes ago, Thrak said:

Some of these prices are insane. Princess charges an incredible amount for inexpensive wines. Here is one egregious example from the spreadsheet:

 

Etude Lyric Pinot Noir

Retail Price: $17

Princess Price: $80

 

Princess Price with gratuity: $94.40

Retail Price (including Tax and $20 corkage): $38.19

 

 

Lower priced wines are always marked up a greater percentage than more expensive wines.  This is not just a Princess phenomenon, it is, pretty much, standard in the restaurant industry.

 

Taking your example of the Etude PN, the princess markup is over 370%.  I agree that is pretty egregious, but since nobody is putting a gun to my head, I wouldn't call it robbery.

 

However, again, similar to practice across the restaurant industry, the markup on the more expensive wines is not nearly as steep.  For example, look at Opus One Overture.  According to @Steelers36"s spreadsheet, the fully-burdened Princess price is $218 vs. the carry-on cost of $175--a markup of only 26%.

 

The sadly departed SHARE specialty restaurant used to have their own wine list.  They were offering the Penfolds Grange for $400.  This was substantially less than the street price which, at the time, was in the neighborhood of $700.  They were selling it for substantially less than the street price!  I never ordered it.  So, it is entirely possible that if I had done so, the response might have been something like, "I am so sorry, sir.  We are out of stock."  I did order the Ridge Lytton Springs for $48 when the street price was about $35--a reasonable markup for a very good wine.

 

Regarding, @Steelers36's question in the opening post, I had a fun conversation with the headwaiter of one of the specialty restaurants (I think it was a Sabatini's.) and asked if he'd ever sold any of the $5200 Petrus.  Yup.  A group came in once, and ordered multiple bottles.

I might also add that the Chappellet Merlot that @Steelers36 highlights in the previous post is an outstanding wine,  

[c-boy]

wow, steelers you even took the time and effort to investigate the gender of the wine makers. I was more than likely in the group of six that purchased a Petrus  

 

                                                     what can I say 

[Steelers36]

32 minutes ago, c-boy said:

wow, steelers you even took the time and effort to investigate the gender of the wine makers. I was more than likely in the group of six that purchased a Petrus  

 

 

                                                     what can I say 

Hardee-har. 

 

No, I did not investigate women winemakers, nor the bio/organic ones.  They were highlighted in sections of the wine menus that were posted, so I chose to reflect those designations.  I did it by simply using color highlights in the main list body rather than pull them out in a separate section. 

 

[symui]

On 8/15/2022 at 10:23 PM, Steelers36 said:

I am going to stick with BYOW whenever possible.

 

That's been my impression of the wine offerings on Princess. 

 

Many thanks for posting the spreadsheet and confirming my previous wine experiences with Princess. I would prefer to buy on board but will continue to lug my favorites so I can enjoy wine with dinner. 

 

Thanks again,

Rick