Choosing and buying better wine does not necessarily mean spending lots of money on wine. In actual fact there are some fantastic wines sold for less than £10 – especially if you know what you’re looking for. However, investing just a little more in your wine can yield a notable improvement in the quality and, therefore, enjoyment. A bottle of wine in the region of £10 - £15 represents excellent value and can deliver on quality and enjoyment far better than a typical £6 supermarket end-of-aisle offer.
The cost of the actual wine inside a typical 75cl bottle represents only a fraction of the overall cost and the lower end. The glass bottle, the label, the branding, the marketing, the cork or cap, the shipping and storage, let alone the tax (£2.16 a bottle and VAT at 20%) makes up the majority of the cost – alarmingly in a region upwards of 90% for bottles below £6.
So if a £6 wine has less than 50 pence’s worth of actual wine in the bottle, then it is easy to understand how the quality can be improved upon by investing more in the upfront purchase. The cost of the bottle, label and shipping etc does not change, irrespective of the bottle price, so the additional investment is firmly on the actual wine, the grapes, the vineyard and heritage of the product.
Undoubtedly there are wine brands with a higher ‘perceived’ value that maybe trade on their name, their history or simply on the public perception, which of course can be created through clever marketing and branding, but generally speaking, investing more in your wine choices is a sound outlay that delivers greater enjoyment and invariably provides a better and more sustainable deal for the vineyards and wine growers.
