Best selling restaurant wines

When we go out to dinner my wife and I invariably order a bottle of wine to enjoy with our meal. I always pick wines at the lower end of the price spectrum; I can't ever remember picking a wine priced at more than $70. That being said a lot of restaurant wine lists feature many selections priced at $100 or above. I wondered how wines at that price point sell. It turns out that Wines & Spirits magazine publishes an annual list of the best selling restaurant wines compiled by polling wine directors from restaurants all over the country who are asked to name their top 10 selling wines.
The 2013 poll (the list seems pretty consistent over the years, at least at the top) was dominated by Napa and Sonoma labels:

1. Cakebread Cellars: $86.48
2. Jordan Vineyard: $101.57
3. Duckhorn Vineyards: $90.29
4. Sonoma-Cutrer: $49.20
5. Silver Oak Wine Cellars: $134.93
6. Frank Family: $80.79
7. La Crema: $48.67
8. Stag's Leap Wine Cellars: $94
9. Decoy: $60
10. Franciscan Oakville Estate: $67.10

I was very surprised that the top selling labels had such a high average price. Indeed, of the top 50 wines listed only 7 have average prices of less than $50. Another interesting note: there were only 14 brands from places other than California on the list. The list reveals why restaurants stock high priced bottles of wine; customers buy them and, given the typical mark up for wine, restaurants profit handsomely when they do. It will be interesting to see if the list evolves over time as more millennial customers come to dominate restaurant sales. Perhaps some of the California labels will ultimately be replaced by more exotic offerings from some of the emerging wine regions we heard about last week.