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The German discount chains have brought a new
competitiveness to the Irish market and there is more cheap wine available than
ever. But is it any good? Martin will discuss what is good value in the world of
wine on the Sean Moncrieff show on News Talk 106 FM on Friday
24th September at about 3.40pm. A recent industry survey reported in trade magazine Shelflife
showed
that 40% of the wine sold in Ireland is priced at €6.99 or less. In the same
period the previous year the figure was 28%. It seems that we are spending less
on wine despite a growing economy. The arrival of Aldi and Lidl with low priced wines has
spooked the other supermarkets. They have all rushed out and stuck cheap wines
on their shelves. Good news for the consumer? Well maybe if you don’t care
what you drink. I’ve tried a good many of them and they rarely rise above the
bland at best and downright awful on occasion. Low price is achieved by increasing yields and the
result is dilute flavourless wine, much as battery chickens taste like cotton
wool or papier-mâché compared to free range. Earlier this year I bought a mixed case at Lidl and was
under whelmed and not impressed that they charged on average 13% more in Ireland
than the UK when duty and VAT were taken out of the price. Then recently Aldi
held a press tasting in Dublin. Last year’s event was a pleasant surprise;
this year’s was a terrible disappointment. There were plenty of cheapies on
offer but very little to smile about. Life is just too short to drink this sort
of stuff. One bright spot of the tasting was their ‘Claret
– Selection Patrice Calvet’ at €5.99. Don’t let the screwcap
put you off it’s a decent drop with some fruit and a little tobacco spice so
it tastes authentically of Bordeaux. Many of the costs of a bottle of wine are fixed –
bottles, corks,labels duty and VAT on those items are much the same regardless
of the value of the liquid. Trading up from say €5.99 to €8.99 will often
triple the value of the liquid while increasing the price by only 50%. The
cheapest Chilean wines are bought as bulk wine for about US$0.50 per litre,
shipped to Europe and bottled there to say money and they are feeble liquids.
Spend US$1.50 per litre and the importer gets a very different and significantly
better wine and you pay only a couple of Euro more not triple. Cheap, ie €5-6, but insipid wine is very
simply not good value. However if you spend €7-10 you can get some great
wines. For example Dunnes offer the Inycon Sicilian range at 3 for €20
at the moment. One of my favourite wines at the moment is the Trio range from Concha
Y Toro. The sauvignon blanc 2003 (88/100) is particularly good and is
widely available for around €11.99 and is good value for money. However I
discovered yesterday that Owith their buying muscle
sourced via the UK sell it for just €9.99 making it a real
bargain. Twice the price of Lidl or Aldi’s cheapest maybe, but great value
because of the pleasure it will give. It’s from the high quality region of Casablanca and could easily be
taken for a New Zealand Sauvignon at €15-16 per bottle.
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