In the summer when deposit interest rates fall below 1%, Moutai has raised prices twice in half a year: For the 1639-yuan Feitian, what on earth is it pricing?
This summer, when the one-year time deposit interest rate of banks has fallen to around 1%, the official listed price of a bottle of Baijiu has been raised twice within half a year.
On the evening of July 17, Kweichow Moutai issued an announcement: starting from 00:00 on July 18, the retail price of 53%vol 500ml Feitian Kweichow Moutai (2026) on the i Moutai platform will be adjusted from 1539 yuan/bottle to 1639 yuan/bottle; the sales contract price for distributors will be adjusted from 1269 yuan/bottle to 1369 yuan/bottle. The 1L pack is also increased from 3119 yuan to 3269 yuan simultaneously.
It has been less than four months since the last price adjustment. On March 31 this year, the sales contract price of the same product was just raised from 1169 yuan to 1269 yuan, and the self-operated retail price was raised from 1499 yuan, which had been used for many years, to 1539 yuan — that was Moutai's first adjustment to the Feitian retail guidance price since 2018. After two rounds, within half a year, the official retail guidance price has risen by a total of 140 yuan, and the channel supply price has risen by a total of 200 yuan. Such a price adjustment frequency is extremely rare in Moutai's decades-long history.
What is even rarer is the timing. At this moment, the Baijiu industry is in a period of in-depth adjustment: high inventory, sluggish sales, and most liquor enterprises are struggling to destock in the process of price reduction promotions. The whole industry is offering discounts, while the leader is raising prices — everyone is writing "Moutai has raised prices again", but the real question is: what makes this counter-cyclical price increase feasible?
The confidence to raise prices: the wholesale price has always been higher than the official price
The first layer of the answer lies in the gap between the two prices.
On July 18, the third-party data platform Today's Liquor Price showed that the reference wholesale price of the original box of Feitian Moutai produced in 2025 was about 1715 yuan per bottle, and the same product of 2026 was about 1655 yuan. A Beijing distributor told Jiemian News that the Feitian wholesale price was in the range of more than 1600 yuan some time ago. After the news of the price adjustment came out, the quotations from peers have generally been above 1700 yuan.
In other words, even after being raised to 1639 yuan, the official retail price still does not exceed the actual market transaction price. This is the essential difference between this round of price increase and the price increase of general consumer goods: it does not push the price above the market level, but brings the official price close to the market price — in the words of Moutai's announcement, it is "following the market trend, maintaining relative stability, matching supply and demand, and balancing volume and price".
Following this line of thinking, a series of actions this year are actually step-by-step implementation of the same set of plans. On January 1, Kweichow Moutai's series of products completed price adjustments, forming a self-operated retail price system anchored by Feitian and in line with market prices, allowing consumers to purchase at official prices on i Moutai; on January 14, the "2026 Kweichow Moutai Market-oriented Operation Plan" was released, clarifying the construction of a dynamic adjustment mechanism for the retail price of the self-operated system; the first price adjustment was made at the end of March, non-standard products such as kilogram packs and boutique products were raised in May, small-specification gift boxes followed in June, and the second price adjustment was made in July. Every step is not abrupt, because the direction has long been written in the plan.
From whose pocket is the money moved to whose pocket
The second layer of the answer requires calculating a channel account.
For many years in the past, Feitian Moutai maintained a peculiar three-tier price structure: the ex-factory price was the lowest, the official retail guidance price was in the middle, and the actual market transaction price was the highest. In the 1499 yuan era, there was a price difference of hundreds or even thousands of yuan between the ex-factory of a bottle of Feitian and its arrival in the hands of consumers — the bulk of this profit has long been accumulated in the circulation link.
Looking back at the 30-year curve of the ex-factory end: it was raised from 619 yuan per bottle to 819 yuan in 2012, raised to 969 yuan in 2018, raised by about 20% to 1169 yuan in November 2023, and then raised twice in 2026 to 1369 yuan. The slope of the curve has steepened significantly in the last three years. Combined with the volume expansion of the i Moutai direct sales channel, it points to the same direction: gradually reclaim the profits that were previously eaten up by the channel price difference into the listed company's self-operated system.
This is also why the dealer group's reaction is relatively calm. The aforementioned Beijing distributor judges that the self-operated retail price is intended to be close to the market wholesale price, and will not affect the shipment volume in the short term — Moutai's core consumer group is not sensitive to small price increases. Baijiu analyst Xiao Zhuping's interpretation to Blue Whale News complements the other side: as a state-controlled enterprise under the jurisdiction of Guizhou Province, raising prices on the one hand creates returns for the listed company and all shareholders, and on the other hand undertakes the responsibility for the local economy; and previously products such as 15-Year Moutai and Boutique Moutai had just had their selling prices reduced, indicating that this price system "does not only go up but not down", but is a two-way adjustment following the market trend.
Against the consensus: this is not a signal of strengthening demand
Associating the two words "price increase" with "strong demand" is the most common mistake in this round of market conditions.
The real picture is: industry demand is still bottoming out, and Moutai's price increase is not because more people are buying, but because it is one of the very few products in the entire industry whose market price is higher than the official price — the price increase is just acknowledging the established fact and calibrating the book price to the real price. In other words, the 1639 yuan pricing does not reflect the prosperity of Baijiu, but the power structure of Moutai in the industrial chain: when all competitors lose their pricing power, the only one that retains pricing power is qualified to conduct "price discovery".
The capital market gave an immediate response to this logic. On July 20, against the background of violent fluctuations in the broader market, the Baijiu sector rose sharply against the trend: Gujing Gongjiu hit the daily limit, Kweichow Moutai rose nearly 6%, and its stock price returned above 1300 yuan, followed by Luzhou Laojiao and other stocks. It should be noted that this was a trading day where tech stocks plummeted and more than 3700 stocks fell — capital is willing to embrace Baijiu on such a day, buying exactly the "deterministic premium": in an environment where deposit interest rates fall below 1% and asset yields generally collapse, a business model that dares to continuously raise prices, has abundant cash flow and stable dividends is itself a scarce asset.
The 1499 yuan era comes to an end: will ordinary people still buy it
For ordinary consumers, the most intuitive feeling of this round of reform is the end of an era.
Starting from January 1, 2026, consumers can buy authentic Feitian at the official price on the i Moutai App — at that time, the price of 1499 yuan was significantly lower than the market price, and countless people set alarms to "wait for the exact time to snap up", and making a profit as soon as they grabbed it. Half a year later, the official price has climbed all the way to 1639 yuan, narrowing the gap with the wholesale price to less than 100 yuan, and the space for "arbitrage through official channels" has basically closed. After the price adjustment announcement was released, the most discussed sentence on social platforms was: "At this price, I'm even less likely to buy it for drinking."
This complaint just reveals Moutai's dual attributes: as a consumer product, the 1639 yuan pricing is indeed squeezing the demand for daily drinking; but as a hard currency, the convergence of the official price and the market price instead strengthens its function as a price anchor — buyers know clearly that they are buying at the market price, and the "value consensus" in gift-giving and collection scenarios is more stable. Moutai's price increase has eliminated arbitrageurs and retained real demand; the company has obviously weighed this trade-off.
Leave a suspense: what happens after the official price catches up with the wholesale price
Of course, this logic has its boundaries.
The premise of "the official price catching up with the market price" is that the market price can hold steady. The current wholesale price of around 1700 yuan is the safety cushion for this round of reform; once the industry adjustment continues to deepen, the wholesale price moves closer to the official price or even falls below it, the dynamic price adjustment mechanism will face a reverse test — at that time, what will be tested is not the courage to raise prices, but the candor to reduce prices. Xiao Zhuping's statement that "the price system does not only go up but not down" is not only an explanation, but also a foreshadowing.
For consumers, the change is more intuitive: the era of "snapping up authentic Feitian at the exact time for 1499 yuan" is over, and the price advantage of official channels is narrowing; for the industry, the leader has re-fixed the price anchor, providing a scarce deterministic coordinate for the Baijiu sector during the in-depth adjustment period. As for how long this coordinate can be fixed, it will be answered by the wholesale price curve in the second half of the year.
Will you still buy the 1639-yuan Feitian — to drink, to collect, or to never touch it again? Share your choice and reasons in the comment section.
(The information in this article is sourced from public reports such as Kweichow Moutai's announcements, Blue Whale News, Jiemian News, National Business Daily, and Sina Finance. The views of enterprises and individuals involved in the article have been clearly indicated. This article does not constitute any investment advice, nor does it constitute a judgment on the operating conditions of relevant companies. The market is risky, and investment needs to be cautious.)
This article is from the WeChat Official Account "BT Finance" (ID: btcjv1), written by BT Finance, and authorized for release by 36Kr.