When speaking of absinthe, people are often shocked by the price of a 750ml bottle – generally around $65 USD. Compared with a standard bottle of wine running at $15 or so, this understandably sounds expensive at first… but is it really? Let’s do some math.
Here, we are comparing a standard size bottle of absinthe with a standard size bottle of wine – 750ml.
750ml bottle = ~25oz
Next we take a look at at how many ounces constitutes a normal glass of each. Note that absinthe is traditionally prepared with ice cold water added in a ratio of 1:3, 1:4, or 1:5. For this example, we’ll use 1:4 since it is the median.
1 glass of wine = 5oz
1 glass of absinthe = 1oz
We then calculate, based upon this, how many glasses (or servings) each bottle will hold.
5 glasses of wine
25 glasses of absinthe
Again, these are the prices we are basing the next calculation upon. Wine prices vary wildly – so use your favorite bottle for a more personal calculation. I’m using $15 as a good, all purpose wine.
1 good bottle of wine = $15
1 good bottle of absinthe = $65
Dividing the price of each bottle by the number of expected servings will yield the price per serving for each.
1 standard glass of wine: 15/5 = $3.00
1 1:4 glass of absinthe: 65/25 = $2.60
So, as you can see… absinthe is not necessarily any more expensive than wine. In fact, using these calculations – it actually comes out quite a bit less expensive. Cheers!
Want to learn more about absinthe? I recently did a quick talk for Ignite Denver 12 that provides a good overview of the spirit:
For further information:
Nice article, I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had to explain this to people when they tell me that absinthe is expensive. Cheers from up north!
Thanks, Evan. I just linked up your weblog under references – had read many of your articles a while back. Great work!
You can’t decently call a 15$ bottle bought in the US “wine”. :)