Tags
bargain, bogofs, bottle, brand, drinking, fooled, good food guide, how much?, price, wine, wine expert
So I’m one of those people who goes to the supermarket with a well thought-out list of what I’m going to buy. Yesterday it was reasonably short. But, scarily we can back with just over £100 worth of shopping (for a week for the two of us….and yes lots of things in the trolley were not on that list !)
Oh dear.
I blame some of it on alcohol we didn’t intend to buy : wine. My partner and I tend to buy more extraneous stuff when we shop together than when we’re apart, so I also blame this on him! haha. Well no, in fairness it was both of us, really.
So the wine. It was on offer. We only know a small amount about which wines are good and we ended up spotting a couple of Red’s that we knew were from a wine company we’d previously bought and enjoyed : HR and McGuigan Estate. But… both were from different years and the McGuigan Estate bottle was a Shiraz instead of the Merlot we’d tried of theirs previously. So all in all, I can safely say that our purchases were not guaranteed to be any better than picking a bottle off the shelf with a blindfold!
We were sucked in by the price.
Though I have to say we did try to make a semi-informed decision based on the brand. I generally feel pretty annoyed with the supermarkets with their price promotions, as I really feel it gives us mere mortals without expertise in the wine industry little help when working out how to buy a nice wine.
I’ve been told a few years back that supermarkets sell bottles at ‘half price’ when that was their intended price all along, and their actual worth. And, looking at regulation, they had to sell that bottle at the full price for at least 28 days before being on offer. OK, not actually looking at regulation – looking at an article in March’s edition of The Good Food Guide, on why we shouldn’t trust BOGOFS (lots of supermarkets apparently don’t always comply to reg’s and even say it’s discounted without even selling at the stated full price!).
So if they had to sell it at an inflated price for 28 days before we might be being ripped off even more (by buying some at the previous price) than just the false feeling of value when we buy the discounted bottle we were never intending to buy.
Humph. This doesn’t help me feel a connection or trusting of my supermarket, that’s for sure.
What’s funny is, I care about this supermarket pricing charade more than the hugely inflated prices bars and restaurants can get away with. But then you’re paying for a service not just a product. You’re paying for the glasses, the seats you’re sitting on, the fuels for the fire that’s warming you, the salaries of the dish-washing guy and the girl who pours you a glass. I guess it all adds up.
If you’re reading this, please tell me, what’s your opinion on wine pricing?