UK: the home of half-priced piss

by Chris Losh

When you were a kid did you ever have a really annoying friend/brother/sister who used to do ridiculously stupid stuff that got you both into trouble? I’m guessing that we’ve all been there at some time, and there’s nothing more irritating than being caught up in the fallout of a bout of madness that was nothing to do with you.

Well, I’m beginning more and more to see the off-trade as the naughty, dysfunctional younger sibling of the (generally) fairly sensible on-trade.

Where the hospitality industry has been trying pretty hard over the last few years to upsell, and to drive business through quality of experience, the off-trade seems to be stewing in a sea of rigid price points that don’t seem to have changed since Job was a lad.

One industry, in other words, has gone to college, got its hair cut and is trying to get a job; the other is lying about its bedroom smoking pot and bumming money off mum and dad while complaining about how unfair life is.

I remember going to a talk given by Jancis Robinson fully 15 years ago, where she talked about a ‘pyrrhic addiction to the £4.99 price point’. Well a decade and a half later, it’s still there despite ten years of duty rises and shipping costs – and as addictions go, it’s proving every bit as self-destructive as La Jancis predicted.

What’s in the bottle at this price might stretch the definition of ‘wine’ given that much of it isn’t fit for drinking without a good dollop of Coca Cola, but hey, it’s cheap, and that, for sure, is the most important thing to the supermarkets!

The problem with this illogical obsession with maintaining prices despite rising costs is twofold: firstly, the wine drinking public assume that wine is inherently cheap, and show no interest in it beyond price and, possibly, alcohol content, making it impossible to get them to spend more.

Secondly, given that the supermarkets are not getting noticeably poorer, it’s the wineries who make less and less money, which means that they need to cut corners over what goes in the bottle.

It’s a classic vicious circle. The wines get worse, so the prices stay low, so the wines get worse.

And don’t even get me started on the government’s role in all this. In alcohol, it’s found an easy target and is gleefully punching it at every opportunity, despite it not having the slightest impact on either health or binge drinking. Alastair Darling should be boiled alive in a vat full of his own eyebrows. Or force-fed supermarket own-label claret until his liver explodes in protest.

2 comments

Mark D. 15-04-2010

Sadly not just an English disease. I have American and Antipodean friends who still ‘enjoy’ BOGOF's and Pricepointed wines in their homelands.

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JW 15-04-2010

Sadly the on-trade also tends to make a legislative soft-target when compared to the supermarket giants. So it always seems to be the restaurateur and the publican who get blamed and penalised for kids roaming the streets, hammered on 4.99 bottles of supermarket vodka.

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