Wine bores have a lot to answer for. Partly thanks to their arcane and often self-satisfied musings, the myth that wine is an elitist drink persists.
But it is certainly a myth — at least in the UK. In a YouGov poll last year, 2,000 UK consumers were asked to name their favourite alcoholic drink. Twenty-eight per cent chose wine, while only 23 per cent chose beer and 20 per cent spirits (presumably the rest were teetotal or cider drinkers). Yet almost half said they assumed that the country’s favourite alcoholic drink was beer.
Politicians still tend to think of beer as the vote-catching drink — even in France, where former president Jacques Chirac always insisted on beer when drinking in public. Successive British chancellors — for similar reasons, I suspect — have taxed beer far more leniently than wine. But they are all way out of date.
I vividly remember the first time I saw wine being poured without comment in an episode of the popular British soap Coronation Street, way back in the last century. Ever since the 1970s, when Brits started to take regular cheap package holidays abroad and could pull wine bottles off a supermarket shelf without having to go into a special shop and pronounce all those foreign names, fermented grape juice has been part of normal life for many millions. Today, there are 33 million wine drinkers in the UK.
Yet the government has increased taxes on wine by 39 per cent in the past 10 years, while taxes on beer and spirits have risen 16 per cent and 27 per cent, respectively. Perhaps it would be a vote-winner if wine drinkers were treated more kindly?
One indicator of just how far down the socio-economic ladder wine has penetrated is the average retail price of wine in the UK. The national average for bottles bought off a shelf is £6.22. (It was £5.73 just two years ago but the sliding pound and rising duty have taken the average price of this largely imported product above £6 for the first time.) Of the £6.22, £2.23 is duty and a further £1.04 VAT, leaving a grand total of just £2.95 for the packaging, transport, retailer’s margin and the wine itself.
According to research company Wine Intelligence, 72 per cent of British adults who earn £20,000-£30,000 a year drink wine at least once a week. In a survey they conducted in July, of 2,000 Americans who regard themselves as regular wine drinkers, 24 per cent earned less than $40,000 a year. Wine is a blue-collar drink.
Like policymakers, many members of the wine trade are also out of date. Those selling wine tend to be pretty keen on what they sell. Many get themselves a wine qualification or two and generally educate themselves to a level above that of the average consumer, thereby putting themselves out of touch with how the majority — especially younger people — view wine. Most people, I suspect, are far more interested in being told how a wine will make them feel than in how it was made.
For someone who sells wine for a living, it’s no great sweat to have a corkscrew at home. But do wine merchants ever stop to think about the craziness of selling something that needs a special instrument to access its contents? Or the madness of shipping inexpensive wine around the world in such a heavy, fragile, carbon-emitting and space-guzzling package as a glass bottle?
There is great merit in encouraging alternative, less precious ways of presenting wine. Cans have become hugely popular in the US. Why not elsewhere? Cartons, pouches and pouches in cartons all seem to make perfect sense for the sort of wine that makes up the vast majority that is sold.
Wine writers are in a bit of bind when it comes to recommending what could be called “everyday” wine. Supermarkets tend to have the lowest prices because they wield such buying power. But we are naturally inclined to champion the independent retailers because they can provide much better service and tend to offer better wine overall, though their prices tend to be higher.
Before recommending what looks like a bargain, I often wonder whether the supermarket has really treated the supplier fairly. I expect other commentators do too.
For the wines I recommend (below), I was clearly not party to the negotiations that resulted in what look like exceptionally good prices. I know that port and particularly sherry producers have long granted ridiculously low prices to supermarkets on the basis that they do at least move stock (I would recommend Waitrose’s own-label sherries in particular).
I feel a bit more confident about recommending inexpensive wines from The Wine Society because the mission of this historic British wine-buying co-operative is explicitly not to maximise profits.
The price of basic wine is unlikely to rise any time soon. Despite dramatic increases in online wine sales and reports that alcohol consumption at home has risen, as a result of Covid-19 restrictions, there are many producers who have been left with surplus stock, not least because their restaurant sales have evaporated and because of the 25 per cent import tariffs imposed by the US last October. Expect wine prices all the way up the scale to soften.
Recommended wines under £10
WHITES AND A ROSÉ
• Cramele Recaš, Wine Atlas Feteasca Regala 2019 Romania
£5.25 Asda 11.5%
• Marques del Norte Brut 2018 Cava
£6 Asda 13%
• Drouet Frères, La Marinière 2019 Muscadet
£6.49 Waitrose 12%
• Terra Madre Catarratto 2019 Sicily
£6.50 Co-op 13%
• Via Vinera, Heritage Misket 2019 Bulgaria
£6.95 The Wine Society 13%
• Quai de la Lune Sauvignon Blanc 2019 Bordeaux
£6.99 Waitrose until November 3 (usual price £9.39) 13%
• Mitravelas, White on Grey Moschofilero 2019 Greece
£7.95 The Wine Society 12%
• Côtes du Rhône Rosé 2019 Southern Rhône
£8 Marks and Spencer 13%
• Poderi dal Nespoli 1929 Famoso 2019 Emilia-Romagna
£8 Marks and Spencer 12%
• Ch L’Oiselinière de la Ramée sur Lie 2018 Muscadet-Sèvre et Maine
£8.50 The Wine Society 12%
• Mineralstein Riesling 2019 Germany
£9.50 Marks and Spencer 12%
REDS
• Terrenal Garnacha 2019 Spain
£6 Marks and Spencer 14.5%
• Trivento, Reserve Malbec 2019 Mendoza
£8 Tesco 13.5%
• Ch du Rival 2018 Bordeaux
£8.50 Stone, Vine & Sun 14%
• Via Vinera Heritage Mavrud 2017 Bulgaria
£8.50 The Wine Society 13.5%
• Les Pierres Dorées, Cuvée Louis Dépagneux 2018 Beaujolais
£8.50 The Wine Society 12.5%
• Le Ralle 2017 Aglianico del Vulture
£8.95 The Wine Society 13%
• Stobi Vranec 2018 North Macedonia
£8.95 Tanners 15%
• Yerevan Winemaker’s Blend 2016 Armenia
£9.95 Tanners 12.5%
More stockists from Wine-searcher.com. Tasting notes on Purple Pages of JancisRobinson.com
Follow Jancis on Twitter @JancisRobinson
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October 31, 2020 at 12:01PM
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