A bottle that looks expensive in Singapore at one price level may look competitively priced at another. We found this by matching wines and vintages in our merchant dataset, using offers recorded as 750 ml, then comparing the listed prices country by country.
The clearest contrast is with Australia. Among 38 matched bottles in the lowest price tier, the median Singapore-to-Australia price ratio was 2.02 after currency conversion. Among 77 matched bottles in the highest tier, the median ratio was 0.65. The relative price changed direction.
Bands use the combined price of each matched pair, explained below; neither country’s shelf price has to fall within that band.
How the comparison changes with price
Here is the Singapore price divided by the comparison country’s price for each matched wine and vintage. A value above 1 means the tracked Singapore listings cost more; below 1 means they cost less. Each figure is the median ratio across the bottles in that tier.
| Paired-price band | vs Australia | vs United States | vs Netherlands |
|---|---|---|---|
| Under €30 | 2.02× (38 bottles) | 1.83× (46 bottles) | 2.14× (14 bottles) |
| €30–100 | 1.09× (181 bottles) | 1.28× (244 bottles) | 1.55× (36 bottles) |
| €100–300 | 0.73× (116 bottles) | 1.03× (228 bottles) | 0.93× (52 bottles) |
| €300+ | 0.65× (77 bottles) | 1.03× (142 bottles) | 0.74× (46 bottles) |
Each price band uses the geometric mean of the two countries’ prices after conversion to euros: multiply the two prices, then take the square root. For example, €20 and €40 give a paired price of about €28, in the under-€30 band. The country samples overlap, so their bottle counts should not be added together. The highest band had a lower median ratio than the lowest in all eight Singapore comparisons: Australia, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom and the United States. Not every intermediate band fell, and the highest UK band had only three matches.
This also held when we excluded Australian wines from the Singapore–Australia comparison. Within 42 producers represented by multiple matched bottles spanning a meaningful price range, 37 showed a lower Singapore-to-Australia price ratio for their more expensive bottles. These checks make the pattern less dependent on one famous label or on Australian wines being cheaper at home.
What one matched bottle looks like
For Château Gantonnet Bordeaux Rouge 2022, 750 ml listings spot-checked on 5 October 2026 showed A$24 in Australia and S$43 in Singapore—roughly twice as much after conversion. This is an individual shop comparison, separate from the country medians above; prices and availability can change.
Why might the gap change?
Tax is one possible part of the story. Singapore charges wine excise per litre of alcohol, so, at the same bottle size and alcohol strength, that charge occupies a larger share of a lower-priced bottle. Australia’s wine equalisation tax is 29% of wholesale value. Those systems are different, but our listings cannot tell us how much of the observed gap each tax caused. Import routes, retailer pricing, promotions and available stock also matter.
The useful lesson is narrower and more reliable: a country’s price for one bottle does not predict its price for the next. Compare the exact wine, vintage and bottle size. The answer may change as you move up the price ladder.
How we measured it
- We used active, matched, apparently available single-bottle offers in our current catalog, updated during the 30 days ending 5 October 2026. The newest database offer update was 30 September. Treat the aggregate as a September snapshot, not a live shopping quote.
- We matched the same producer wine and vintage across countries, using listings recorded as 750 ml. For each merchant, we kept its lowest eligible listing; the country price was the median across its tracked merchants.
- We converted prices with the European Central Bank’s rates saved on 2 October 2026 (archived XML). We excluded extreme paired price ratios outside 0.25–4 before calculating the displayed ratios.
- Coverage is uneven and is not a random sample of shops or wines. Most wine-and-country cells contain one merchant. Database bottle sizes are sometimes defaults, merchant stock can change, shipping is excluded, and tax inclusion was not checked across every shop. United States sales tax may be added at checkout.
This is a comparison among tracked offers, not a verified checkout saving. It describes neither every shop nor national average wine prices. The downloadable summary data (CSV) includes counts for Singapore against each of the other eight supported countries, plus Australia against the United States, by price tier.
Sources and further reading
- Genuine Grape production catalog, matched merchant-offer extract as of 5 October 2026; download the aggregated comparison.
- European Central Bank, euro foreign-exchange reference rates, 2 October 2026.
- Singapore Customs, list of dutiable goods; Australian Taxation Office, wine equalisation tax guidance.