Last night I found myself in west London on route to a friend’s house and realised I don’t have a bottle of wine with me, there was an Oddbins and a large Tesco nearby, I thought best to go to Tesco, as I know Oddbins charges like the light brigade now.
I went directly to the fine wine section and looked at the choice, there was 1999 Cos d’Estournel for about £90, too expensive for an average wine, the 1999 wasn’t great and it really wasn’t until 2005 that Cos really sorted out the quality. Then there was a 2001 Ceretto Bricco Rocche Barolo which whilst being a great producer, and also 2001 being a great year for Barolo, this was a hard and unforgiving wine which I recall tasting in Vinitaly several years ago, decidedly not worth the money. They also had several new world wines like Dead Arm which I’ve never been a major fan of anyway and not much else. So I started looking at other shelves, France, nothing, Italy, again nothing took my eye, Australia, nope, nothing there for me, I thought I know, South America, I’ll get a Carmenere or Malbec. I was astonished to find not one of either from both Countries, it was all Merlot, Cabernet Sauvignon or Syrah, then I looked back at France, Italy, Australia, New Zealand and I found dozens of Merlot, Cabernet and Syrah. Where was the choice? It was more like the old Ford Motor Company, “you can have any colour you like, as long as it’s black”.
OK change of plan, now I have to find a decent wine, so continued looking, I saw a bottle of 2007 Montes Alpha Cabernet Sauvignon, I tasted this wine at the Wines of Chile Tasting a year or two earlier and thought it was good. Aurelio Montes is one of the best winemakers in South America, so it should be fine, and the price I thought was also very reasonable, £11.99, so I bought.
During dinner we opened the bottle and it was every bit as good as I recalled; Good fruit, excellent depth, rich and typically Cabernet with a good future, we discussed it for some time and the fact that Tesco are offering 25% off for any 6 bottles, Wow, I thought, no wonder they sell so much, this is a fantastic deal.
Still thinking about it this morning, what a great wine and the possibility to pick it up for £9 after the discount, then I thought hang on, supermarkets are not charitable organisations, they don’t do such great deals, they are brilliant at taking your money, and making things look like a bargain, but real and genuine bargains.... that’s a completely different story so decided to check the price on winesearcher. First price that came up was in the UK, a firm in East Sussex, £7.50 a bottle! Then I checked the 6 bottle 25% discount offer, seems this wine isn’t included, its £68.34 for 6, working out to £11.39 a bottle.
See even the experts get sucked in to thinking they have a bargain, everyone wants to beat the book on price, yeah, well “good luck” Tesco.