Exciting News For the Napa Valley Industry!

This past week was one of the biggest and most important weeks in the Napa Valley. Premier Napa Valley (or PNV for short) not only is the single biggest fundraising opportunity for the Napa Valley Vintners but it is also the first chance that wineries get to gauge the mood of the trade as a whole. For context for those who aren’t familiar, PNV is only open to members of the wine trade. This includes restaurant groups, retailers, resorts, importers, distributors, etc. These are the front lines to the wine consumer and they have the pulse on what their customers are willing to buy. The vintage highlighted this year is the much anticipated and delicious 2023 vintage and most of the lots were from that vintage itself. The total amount raised by the auction was significant! The official total in the press release was $3.3 million however, tracking the lots sold my number came to a little under $3.1 so perhaps there are other opportunities to raise funds that were included this year outside of the actual auction itself. I’ll get into my analysis here in a minute but first let’s talk about why PNV is such a big deal.

Why PNV is important?

Premier Napa Valley is a critical fundraising element for the Napa Valley Vintners. This week happens in February in the valley and is attended by trade from all over the world. Wineries sign up in the fall for what they would like to donate to the Vintners and then the Vintners auction the lots off with significant assistance from Sotheby’s Auction House. The nice thing about the partnership with Sotheby’s is that bidders from all over the world can take part in the auction whereas before you had to be in the room to bid. The lots are unique blends ranging from 5-20 cases that usually can’t be purchased any other way making them very collectable and rare. The Vintners then use the proceeds to fund other events and their operations throughout the year.

So What Are The Main Take Aways?

So, based on my analysis the average bottle price this year was $215 dollars per bottle which for all intents and purposes was flat to last year. However the overall number of lots was up a whopping 17% over last year. The majority of the increase was in Cabernet lots since white and sparkling lots were flat from the previous year. The number of bottles available was up 10% over last year even though there was a drop in 240 bottle lots from the previous year. The 60 and 120 bottle lots both increased significantly (18% and 33% respectively) while the 240 bottle lots dropped by 24% after a large increase last year. The large lots usually end up on the lower spectrum of the price per bottle and that was the case this year with the 240 bottle lots going for a bargain of $113 per bottle. Once again only one lot just squeaked above $1,000 a bottle this year.

Prices per bottle by variety dropped almost across the board this year with the exception of two categories. The “Other Red” category was carried by one lot, a lovely Grenache from Heidi and Chelsea Barrett as a collaboration lot. Also surprisingly was the increase in Merlot prices per bottle with three lots of Merlot bucking the trend with an average of $250 per bottle, up from $163 per bottle last year. Given that it is back closer to the 2023 average Merlot bottle price perhaps Merlot is having a moment? Cabernet Franc, which reached parity with Cabernet in price per bottle last year took a 26% hit this year dropping it back down.

Coming in at a whopping 159 of 194 lots, Cabernet Sauvignon dominated the auction. Although the generally flat price per bottle from last year suggests that the buyers are still a bit wary of putting a bunch of bottles of above $300 wines in front of their customers at this moment in time.

Collaborations!

Winemaking Collaborations debuted last year and this year the number of collaborations increased to 14 lots. The collaborations averaged 17% above the average bottle price last year but dropped this year to 28% below average. This is a shame because these are truly unique lots which capture the spirit of the Napa Valley so completely.

Women Winemakers Gaining Ground

Some good news this year is that women have made up significant ground in parity to lots made by men and male/female teams. When I started tracking this data in 2019 there was almost a 14% disparity between the average bottle price and the average price of bottles made by women. This year the difference was essentially flat between male and female winemakers average price per bottle and this is something to be celebrated! There were 43 lots made by female winemakers this year compared to 33 last year. Adding in the Male/Female Winemaking teams that meant a full 31% of the lots had a woman involved which has been steadily growing the past few years.

The Consultant Effect

As a winemaking consultant myself, I’m excited to see that the “consultant effect” is still in play although decreased from previous years. The wineries which promoted ties to a prominent consulting winemaker in their photos saw a 22% increase in bottle price over the standard average bottle price ($261 and $215 respectively) regardless of style of wine produced. This is in line with what the analysis has shown in previous years also although the percentage difference is decreasing over the past three years. This was again pulled from the auction catalog information given by the wineries. It should be noted that the number of lots promoting a consultant went up from 37 in 2024 to 59 in 2025, an almost 60% increase! Maybe people read my blog from last year?

Does Lot Order Matter Anymore?

In 2019 when I first looked at the data there was an interesting bell curve around the money spent per bottle. If you were at the beginning or end of the auction the spend was usually less per bottle than if you found yourself in the heart of the order. That appears to not be the case anymore.

Above is the spread of price per bottle in lot order. One can see that most of the bottle prices are clustered below the $400 price per bottle with a few outliers jumping over that mark. This shows a reluctance by the trade to really push bottle prices right now outside of a few key wineries.

For comparison’s sake, below is the same graph from 2023. The y axis has been normalized to $1,800 per bottle on the 2025 chart so that the comparison between the years are clear. As always there are a few outliers but you can see the heights reached in 2023 are generally higher than where we were this year and the spread is a bit less tightly clustered in the same zone.

Conclusions…

Average bottle price was down this year but overall spend was up which is great news for the Vintners. Women led lots have now generally reached parity with their male led counterparts which is awesome news and there were more women involved in the lots than there have been in the recent years. Smaller lots are still getting better prices per bottle. If a winery wants an above average bottle price, hire a prominent consultant. Finally, there was quite a bit of interest around my analysis this year. If you are a winery who is interested in understanding the analysis a bit more please reach out via my website contact. I’m happy to walk through the data.