The Sip Score, explained
Every deal on SipStory carries a Sip Score from 0 to 100. It answers one question: how smart a buy is this, really? Not how cheap — how good a deal. Here's exactly how it's built, with nothing hidden.
The cheapest bottle on a page is often a cheap wine. A genuinely great buy is a good wine, well-discounted, at a fair price per bottle, at a price that's actually low right now. The Sip Score adds those four things up.
The four ingredients
Savings
up to 55 ptsHow deep the discount is against the recommended retail price. A bigger genuine markdown scores higher, scaled up to a sensible ceiling (we cap the credit at around 85% off, so an implausible “90% off” can't run away with the score).
Quality
up to 30 ptsHow good the drink is. When a critic score, medal or customer rating is available, we use it. When it isn't — which is most of the catalogue — we estimate quality from the product's market price (what it normally sells for is a real signal: a $45 bottle outranks a $9 one), nudged up for premium wine regions like the Barossa or Margaret River and for cues like “reserve”, “single vineyard”, “single malt” or “small batch”. We calibrate this per category, so a craft spirit, a craft beer and a fine wine are each judged against their own kind — never against each other.
Price per bottle
up to 15 ptsGenuine affordability. We read the pack size of every listing and rank on the true per-bottle price, so a $13.50-a-bottle dozen is recognised as the value it is — and a carton total is never mistaken for a single-bottle price.
Trust
bonus up to +5Is this price genuinely low — or just a big number with a line through it? We track each wine's price over time and reward deals priced low against their own history. It's the one signal a retailer can't fake by inflating an RRP, and it sharpens as we log more price history.
A worked example
Jarressa Estate Barossa Cabernet Shiraz — normally $46/bottle, on offer at $13.49/bottle (a six-pack for $80.94).
That's a real 71% markdown (strong savings), a $46 wine from the Barossa (solid quality by market price + premium region), a keen $13.49 per bottle (good price), and below its recent tracked price (a trust nudge) — which lands it firmly in “Great buy” territory.
What the score means
| Score | Band | Roughly |
|---|---|---|
| 80–100 | Cracking | Drop everything |
| 65–79 | Great buy | Genuinely worth it |
| 50–64 | Solid | A fair deal |
| 35–49 | Fair | Okay if you want it |
| 0–34 | Meh | Not really a deal |
Price per standard drink
Alongside the Sip Score, most deals carry a second number: ≈ $X per standard drink. It's the great equaliser across categories. A bottle of wine, a six-pack of craft beer and a bottle of gin hold wildly different amounts of alcohol, so comparing their sticker prices tells you almost nothing. An Australian standard drink is a fixed 10 grams of pure alcohol — so dividing a deal's price by the number of standard drinks it contains gives a true, like-for-like measure of value.
We work it from each product's volume, pack size and alcohol percentage — roughly volume × ABV × 0.789 ÷ 10g standard drinks, then price ÷ standard drinks. A $55 bottle of 40% gin holds about 22 standard drinks (≈$2.50 each); a $22 carton of mid-strength beer about 25 (≈$0.90 each). It's the number that lets you weigh a wine against a whisky against a hard seltzer on a single honest axis. It's a guide to value, not a suggestion to drink more — how much you drink is up to you, and SipStory is strictly for over-18s who drink responsibly.
Where we're honest with you
No ranking is perfect. RRPs are set by retailers and can be inflated, which is why we cap how much a steep discount can earn and lean on signals that can't be gamed — a wine's region, its cues, and its real price history. We're also clear that the score is an opinion built from public data, not a guarantee; always confirm the price and read the wine's own reviews before buying. Most importantly: ranking is never for sale. No retailer can pay to score higher.