Charles Sturt University economic researcher Associate Professor Eddie Oczkowski has developed the Australian Wine Price Calculator, available on the Internet, to help select that bottle for the “right price”.

“When using the calculator, the buyer selects one of Australia’s reputable wine guides and enters information about the wine – its quality or reputation, vintage (back to 1996), grape variety, the region where the grapes were grown and the shop price,” Dr Oczkowski said.

“After the information is processed, the buyer receives an estimated ‘average’ price for the wine and the difference between this and the shop price. This does show the bargains!”

After eight years’ study into wine pricing in Australia, the calculator is based on a set of “hedonic wine price functions”, a technique Professor Oczkowski developed to simulate the effects of wine quality and reputation on prices. The technique has been used to simulate wine prices in Europe and USA.

“One finding has been that wine prices appears to be influenced more by a wine’s reputation rather than the quality of a particular vintage of that wine, so selecting ‘reputation’ in the calculator gives a more accurate estimate of price,” he said.

Reputable guides to Australian wines are important in the accurate estimation of wine prices.

“An important basis for ‘hedonic’ pricing models is perfect access to information. Popular wine guides by Jeremy Oliver or James Haliday are important for improving the quality of information to wine buyers, which is why these and others are used in the calculator,” Dr Oczkowski said.

The Australian Wine Price Calculator was recently updated using the 2003 editions of four reputable Australian wine guides.