Wine

[BradNaylor]

The talk today of stipulating a minimum price per unit of alcohol has got me thinking.

It seems that I am a fairly typical wine buyer - paying on average about £4.00 for a bottle of red.

At Christmas however, I went to Majestic and splashed out £150 on a dozen bottles. Very nice they were too, but not noticably nicer than my normal purchases.

I couldn't help feeling that for the same £150 I could have bought 24 bottles from Tesco, Sainsburys, or Morrisons and at least 12 of them would have been as good as the ones I bought - leaving me with 12 extra bottles to give to visiting relatives!

Am I right, or am I an uneducated cheapskate philistine?

 

[RogerS]

Each to their own, Dan, I guess....cheapskate :wink:

 

[big soft moose]

or you could have bought 75 bottles of white lightning - okay so it tastes disgusting but after the first couple of bottles you dont notice

 

[DeanN]

I'm with Dan on this. Again, I'm a £4-5 bottle man, but have spent considerably more on occasion - but they didn't taste any different to me.

I'd rather take the £150 over to France and bring a boot load back. When we go over, we always drink the local table wines, and they taste fine to me - can't be bad, as the locals drink them by the trolley load.

 

[PowerTool]

Same as Dan and Dean - there's a lot of good wines at under a fiver a bottle

Andrew

 

[big soft moose]

I remember when i was young and foolish buying a young lady i was interested in an £80 bottle of wine for her birthday.

I really should have save my money and got her a 12 quid bottle , because then i would have had the other 68 quid to drown my sorrows with when she turned me down

still we lives and learns - my swimbo doesnt drink

 

[joiner_sim]

Me and my girlfriend stayed in the Regency Hyatt, Birmingham on Valentines Day. I had a £45 bottle of champagne in a bucket of ice ready for when we checked in, thats the most expensive drink/bottle I've brought.

Now I'm drinking 12 cans of asda lager for £2.19 !!!!! :lol:

 

[Steve Maskery]

Well I didn't get the shape I am by being teetotal, so I think I have some sort of authority on the subject.

First rule, if you like it, drink it, and stuff everybody else.

Second rule, by and large, as with everything else in life, you get what you pay for, like for like.

"Red Wine" is a bit like saying "Wood". It means different things to different people. Some wnat only oak and walnut, others are happy with pine and rubberwood from I&^a.

Some wine is expensive only because it is rare. This is particularly true of some French Chateaux. Very rare, very expensive and very not to my taste.

Last year I had a Port-Tasting evening as a B-pressie. Very good it was too, I like aglass of port now and then. My usual tipple is Niepoort LBV. It was £12 a bottle, now rather more at £15 or so.

Well pied with 20 or so different Pots, we bought a half-case - 5 LBVs that we knew and a£40 bottle of something special. Same Bodega (is that right for a Port-house?) but different label.

Well it was nice, and I was worried that I would be spoiled at having tasted a notch higher than my usual. I needn't have worried. Yes it was fine, but it was not more enjoyable than my LBV, so I was glad I'd tried and rejected it.

One thing I do know, never let a teetotaler buy you wine. My friend Mary bought round a bottle at the weekend, She'd bought a case from Makro. No idea what it cost, but if the money folded she was robbed.

Anyway these days I like to spend my money (well, more accurately, SWMBO's money) in Italy or South America.

Cheers
Steve

 

[zeb]

what is this new price going to do to the price of beer,larger oh and my fav vodka ?

 

[NickWelford]

I generally buy 10 - 12 pounds per bottle wine but always when it's on half price at various supermarkets. Then I buy a few to tide me over so getting the 5% discount (except for Morrison's - the tightwads have discontinued the discount). There's usually a marked difference between the 4 and the 10 pound bottle.

 

[John. B]

Yup, I do the same generally as Nick. I was once invited to a wine tasting at 'Vinopolis' in London.
Most of the wines in their 'Tastings' are around £12.00 to £15.00 per bottle.
For a couple of pounds extra you can taste more expensive wines.
I particularly like the Shirazes. So I tried a £60.00 bottle of Shiraz.
Where it was better than the £12.00 stuff I'd just had, it was nowhere £48.00 better.
I wonder if I just missed all the subtle aroma's the touch of oak or the hint of blackberry? :-k
It was a damn good day though. ccasion5:

John. B

 

[Steve Maskery]

Forgot to mention. Last Thursday I went to a wine tasting (Sunday Times), 25 wines in 2 hours. On Friday I felt much better than I deserved to.

Good VFM
S

 

[Jenx]

Do like a nice bottle of Barolo
gets a bit pricey if you have it in a 'nice eatery' ... usually somewhere around the £30 mark ... cheaper if you buy it from a Vikkie-Wines or similar, for quaffing at home.
£12 - £15 ish.

For more 'cost effective' wines, quite partial to most of the Tuscan Chianti's ... £4 - £5 a bottle typically, for having at home.

 

[Matt_S]

I always used to spend £5-6 on a bottle but since getting into winemaking with my grandad's old kit I hardly buy wine! I obviously do the proper fruit wine which is a slow process but lovely. The real suprise though is the quality of the grape wine kits! For £40 or so you can make 40 bottles of very nice wine that is as good as spending a £5 in the shops! Yes it takes a bit of effort but doing it in bulk is easier than the smaller kits.

What I do buy though is whisky, nothing fancy normally Grants and similar brands around the £10-12 mark. These prices would really rocket and put me off buying whisky when I only get through 3 or so bottles a year!

 

[promhandicam]

If you enjoy good wine and are prepared to spend a bit more than £4 a bottle check out laithwaites. I signed up last year to their 4 seasons wine plan and get a case of wine for around £70 delivered every three months. There are some fantastic wines included and I've not had a bad one yet. It is also a good way to try out wines from different regions and different grape varieties.

steve

 

[Harbo]

I have to agree that generally you get what you pay for though some of the top end prices like Petrus at several thousands a bottle is eye watering and a complete waste for the majority of us.
I am a member of a Wine Society which meets once a month and drink 5 different wines - normally 10 people to a table so that's 1/2 bottle each in the evening.
It's amazing the differences in tastes of the drinkers some like a particular wine others don't - I have never seem to work out any logic to it other than we all have different tastes, likes and dislikes. Part of the fun is guessing the prices - often the cheaper ones come out best but not always.
Whether you drink wine on its own or with food does make a difference.
I live near Berry Bros & Rudds outlet so buy the much reduced bin ends from them (for special occasions), but generally I look out for offers, wherever, on the types of wine I prefer (many )
I do like single malts and am partial to vintage port (buy a young vintage at £18 to 20 and keep - the Crusted types are a good cheaper alternative) and Plymouth gin (and tonic).

Rod

 

[woodbloke]

I was staggered to read that the consumption of alcohol in the UK has gone up by 40% since 1970 and has fallen steadily in mainland Europe...apparently the average wine drinker in the UK gets thru' 120 bottles pa. I like a tipple at the weekend (£4 a bottle ish) and we used to get the 'buy 6 get 5% off' deal at Tesco. In fact, a goodly percentage of the shopping bill each week was 'drink', so we've now decided to only get a couple of bottles each week (sometimes you see a '3 for £10' deal as well which is quite good)...so we've decided to cut back.
Not like Gazza though, who was on 4 bottle of Scotch a day :shock: - Rob

 

[Russ]

This is the wife's cave... She has a passion for the stuff and won't even let me in the room (even though I write the cheques and built her the shelving) She even had the cheek to employ someone to install one of those heavy-duty 3-way locks to keep me out (which I also wrote the cheque for) and when she goes shopping she buys me one of those cheap wine-boxes...

Next time she's out of the country your all welcome to pop down to sw France for a drink..... Just bring some heavy-duty cutting gear and a corkscrew....

 

[Maverick.uk]

For me the suggestion of an increase to a minimum price per unit for booze is another case of a stealth tax. The government will go along with it cos they will get more revenue.

It really annoys me, and thats from a bloke who probably drinks less than on average 3 units a month.

Cheers

Mav

 

[thejhw]

I was staggered to read that the consumption of alcohol in the UK has gone up by 40% since 1970 and has fallen steadily in mainland Europe...apparently the average wine drinker in the UK gets thru' 120 bottles pa. I like a tipple at the weekend (£4 a bottle ish) and we used to get the 'buy 6 get 5% off' deal at Tesco. In fact, a goodly percentage of the shopping bill each week was 'drink', so we've now decided to only get a couple of bottles each week (sometimes you see a '3 for £10' deal as well which is quite good)...so we've decided to cut back.
Not like Gazza though, who was on 4 bottle of Scotch a day :shock: - Rob

Hi Rob.
I'm not sure where you get your figures from, but I think you might have misinterpreted them.
The current UK consumption of wine per capita is a little over 27 litres, or 36 bottles.
In terms of quantity, this puts us in 5th place globally, with France, Italy, the USA and Germany all drinking more wine than us. We, however, spend more on wine than anyone else; as our tastes as a nation become more educated, so we are buying better quality.
This is a huge subject and not worth getting hot under the collar about, but the figures are easily available.

Jim