Your Monthly Wine Budget - How Much Do You Spend?

Unfortunately, wine costs money (dammit!).  Each bottle or case comes with a cost.  Everybody has their own level of income and expenses and if you a wine drinker, money is always part of the purchase decision (regardless of your income bracket).

So, how do you determine how much to spend in a given week/month?  Do you even have a budget?  When do you feel you have exceeded your planned spend?  Is there a plus/minus threshold?

For us, as folks who have a wine blog, we have a different tact than maybe most.  We are always on the prowl for new finds that are under $30 (preferably under $25) here in Canada.  That number would be probably closer to $20 if we were back living in the States.  That said, we don't have a specific planned budget number so much as we want to get a sense of the types of wine we wanted to try and then potentially review.  We kind of work our loose budget around that as best we can.  We drink wine pretty much daily with dinner but there are variances in the number of bottles per week, which just means we float around the 4 - 5 bottles of purchased wine per week mark.  We do subsidize our wine drinking with some of our own wines as well.  We have produced a Chardonnay, a Douro Tinto, and a Barolo of late.  We have a Cabernet Franc to start shortly.  So, that helps us keep the budget to a dull roar.  Either way, it is a budgetary commitment on our part to maintain a selection of reviewable wines and then keep the inventory new and fresh.

We try whenever possible to use the following to keep the pricing reasonable:

Mixed Case Discounts (Buy 11 Get One Free)
Incentives to Purchase Certain Volumes (10% off your purchase of $100)
Store Loyalty Programs (10% Off for Members)
Monthly Promotional Sales on certain Producers
Bin Ends (Last few bottles of a particular vintage - somewhat rare)

Other folks who drink wine regularly like to mingle their bottle purchases with Boxed Wine so they can still have a glass without worrying about opening and finishing a whole bottle (we just don't seem to have that problem).

Every little bit helps in today's Global Economy, as we have seen our wine purchases rise based upon our glamorous place in online wine media. :)  But, we would love to hear from you as well.  Do you have any tips or tricks to get the wine budget in line.  Does that even matter to you?  If it were down to a case of steaks or a case of wine, does wine always win?

Let us know.

Keep on tasting!

Chris & Shannon

PS - we would still love some feedback on the catchphrase (Keep on 'tasting' or 'drinking'?)