DEFIANCE, Mo. — Wine collectors will tell you a small percentage of bottles appreciate in value over time. But right now on Missouri's wine trail, makers say prices are up on everything.
"You're talking about the wine bottles. You're talking about the screw caps. You're actually talking about labels to a degree because it all works together," Defiance Ridge Vineyards owner Chuck Gillentine said.
Gillentine said they're seeing higher prices when they can even get their hands on supplies. On a trip four months ago to their west coast operations, he saw firsthand the huge shipping container backlog.
"The stories you heard about all of the ships, oh my God it's incredible," he said.
Watching as these bottles come across the line, Brent Baker runs a mobile bottling operation. In his company Old Woolam Custom Bottling, he puts out a couple of million bottles a year for 80 wineries in the midwest.
He says some of those clients are now in their own supply chain bottleneck.
"I have had a lot of clients have difficulty getting glass," he said, the machines whirring around him. "That is going to be an ongoing going battle, I think, in the future until things start to straighten themselves out."
Gillentine says they might raise prices, but lowering quality is out of the question. They're keeping the recipe the same on this shipment. And all that follow.
"They will get sealed, stacked, and away we go," Baker said, adding with a laugh "and the good thing about this business is people drink whether times are good or bad."