Why are the Supermarket wines so cheap?

The UK wine trade has become dominated by supermarkets. They can only deal with those suppliers who can deliver in huge volumes and at very low prices. As they buy and sell wine in exactly the same way as they buy and sell baked beans, they also expect consistency from year to year, so Mother Nature has to be controlled.

When you consider that around £2 a bottle is duty and then add the cost of bottling and shipping plus the sellers’ margin, then add VAT on top, there is not much left for the cost of the wine. So how do the branded-wine producers do it?

They can’t:

• Use small, individual vineyards

• Make wine solely from that year’s crop

• Grow and tend their own vines

• Hand prune to produce low yields and high quality

• Hand pick and sort the grapes

• Be dependent on the vagaries of the weather

• Use environmentally friendly farming methods

• Develop old vines with very deep roots which search for water

• Reduce handling to reduce the level of antioxidant (sulphur) required

• Allow the wine to slowly develop character

• Afford expensive oak casks

• Bottle the fresh wine at the vineyard

They can (and do):

• Buy-in grapes on the spot market

• Flash freeze grapes for bulk storage

• Make grape concentrate to add back as fruit flavour

• Use grapes from prairie-style vineyards who do not make their own wine but,

  • Use cloned grape varieties designed to be tended by machine

  • Machine prune

  • Machine harvest

  • Irrigate heavily

  • Spray heavily with insecticides and herbicides

  • Use heavy doses of Copper Sulphate to avoid mildew

• Remove the residual Copper with Potassium Ferro-cyanide

• Mechanically de-stalk the bulk grapes

• Chill-filter to precipitate and remove harmless tartrates

• Decide on the style later by:

  • Adding acidity by the shovelful

  • Adding charred oak chips

  • Adding water

  • Adding grape concentrate to sweeten

  • Using artificial yeasts to alter the flavour

• Ship in bulk tankers and bottle close to the end-user to save shipping cost

• Dose heavily with sulphur to avoid oxidation during all the mechanical processing and bulk shipping

All this reduces the cost and gives us what we apparently want: A grape-based alcoholic beverage with a clever label made consistently to a style dictated by marketing men and delivered at a price which sits inconspicuously in a grocery till receipt. If it tastes flabby and flat and gives you a head-ache then who cares, it’s only £4.00 a bottle (“Reduced from £9.99”).