Vintages Preview - March 2025
Published 2025-02-26Michael Vaughan has released their previews of the February 2025 Vintages releases. Let's see if there's anything interesting coming to the LCBO store shelves later this month!
Last blog post I introduced you to Michael Vaughan's Vintage Assessments and sure enough, just as I post my list for January and start turning attention to the February release, his preview is OUT for mid-month!
Important
While I prepared this post, Vintage Assessments released their preview of the March 01, 2025 release! If you want to get ahead of the game and get an early peek at what's coming to the LCBO in March, head on over to their site
Tip
It may come as no surprise to anyone who spends a decent amount of time shopping in the Vintages section at their local LCBO, but it is NOT uncommon for wines to hit the shelves a week or two before their actual release date. I'm not sure if this is intentional, a tactic to fill empty shelves, or some big secret. Regardless, if you know you're hunting for a release that's in limited supply, it's not going to hurt you to check in-person. Online inventory is actually pretty good on this front too!
Warning
This whole tariff situation between Canada and the USA is no doubt going to complicate things. As of February 04, 2025, Ontario intends to pull ALL US-imported liquor and wine from store shelves and online ordering. I'll aim to keep this in mind and had already bought my 'February' choices ahead of all this drama.
Analysis - Overall Trends
With the preview of the February 15, 2025 release available, we can do a quick look at the month as a whole.
Rather than doing a lot of manual work, we're now using Python (yay, something else to learn!) to generate the analysis. I'm expecting a few bumps along the way, and I'll point out any deficiencies as they come up.
Looking at the releases for the month as a whole, nothing overly surprising as Ontario/the LCBO continues to want red wine. It looks like a predominantly Pinot/Cab kind of month, and there's a continued small uptick in the number of bottles being released after the significant drop-off leading up to the end of 2024.
Analysis - Countries of Origin
After a bit of a dropoff at the end of 2024 and the start of 2025, we've seen a notable uptick in 'old world' releases, with both Italy and France seeing roughly 39 new bottles or vintages make up part of the February release (a delta of ~+10 bottles this month vs. last). Australia also saw a modest uptick, but the biggest surprise was the significant decline in US-originated bottles month-over-month, with February seeing only 16 new US-originated releases, a decline of 14 bottles vs. January 2025.
Analysis - Price Trends
With news swirling of a predicted-downturn in wine sales, largely driven by the rising cost of California-red and a downtick in demand from consumers, the average price of a Vintages bottle from the LCBO ticked upwards in February by about $1.50. While we saw a significant dropoff since the 2024 holiday season in both French and US-wine bottles in the context of the Vintages release, bottles originating in almost every other country (including Canada) saw a modest uptick over the past month.
For Fun -- Until the LCBO Comes Calling...
For the foreseeable future, I'll be compiling and sharing with you any interesting insights that come up via the Vintages assessments, and building a little bit of a database just for the benefit of tracking this kind of data over time. While I don't doubt I could get my hands on it if I tried hard enough (and came across some interesting mechanisms that agents and other retailers seem to be able to use), for the moment, this is satisfying my need for data and information.
And hey, I got to play with Python a bit...and my workstation didn't explode!
What kinds of questions do you have about the Vintages releases? Hit me up at the social media links below and let me know!