Tesco manipulating wine prices to fool consumers
It’s nothing new, but here’s a great example of UK supermarkets manipulating wine prices in order to fool consumers into thinking that they are getting a great deal. This is not a secret (or a new practice) but it should not be allowed.
This wine is on the shelf at £9.99. £9.99! Just think of the fantastic wines that you can get in the UK for £10 and then you have something like this.
It has to be on the shelf at that price so that Tesco can ‘promote’ it at £4.99 as being a great deal at 50% off. In fact it is on the Tesco website at the discounted price.
Is it technically a discount? Yes.
Is it worth anything close to £10? Ummmm… no. Not ever.
In this case and a hideously labelled South African Pinotage Rosé called Wine Route. It’s from Accolade Wines, which lists a number of generic supermarket brands in it’s portfolio, including Echo Falls, Banrock Station and Kumala.
I refuse to purchase this wine on principle, so I can’t give you an opinion on the stuff in the bottle, but I’ll put a fair wager on the fact that it’s awful, engineered rubbish. The 11.5% alcohol on a South African Pinotage Rosé said to have raspberry and tropical flavours will alert those with some winemaking knowledge to the manipulation likely involved.
Pinotage Rosé can be a delicious summer wine and it’s one of the styles where Pinotage has an opportunity to convert some of the anti-Pinotage brigade. So I am not against it as a wine style. But more consumers need to understand what they are getting when they buy a wine in a UK supermarket that is 50% off. Most of the time its going to be bollocks in a bottle. The wine itself is likely only worth a few pence and likely to give you a headache in the morning.
Simple solution? Don’t buy it.
And tell a friend.
Welcome back, Chris — One year and five months since your last post here!
Hope we have to wait till the end of 2014 for the next.
Youmake good points above, but I think we all know the supermarket ‘half-price’ wine trick, and it certianly works in shifting wines. Problem is many will not buy at other than ‘half-price’
Hi Peter
Yes, it has been a while. I’ve been a bit distracted by nappies, bottles and the like…
Hope you mistyped, and that you mean you hope you DON’T have to wait until the end of 2014! 😉
Gosh, yes my honest mistake, please don’t leave it so long to your next post.
On the wine – I think the name and the label are quite good, certainly the wine stands out on the shelf. South Africa is proud of its wine routes — but no-one is going to find this anonymous winery on any wine route……
I saw Wine Route red (Merlot/Cab/Shiraz) today on the shelves of my local Tesco today, it too was priced at 9.99 and had an anti-theft device clamped to their necks — so apparently some think it worthy of theft.
More info on how they can sell the wine at half-price can be found by reading the back label. This is a bulk shipped wine bottled in England using cheap thin bottles. Given that Accolade is a huge global wine company (ex Constellation AU & EU) they have the economies of scale, and save on shipping and bottling. They may not get much per bottle but they’ll sell a great many bottles via Tesco. Constellation didn’t get to be the worlds biggest wine company by selling at a loss…
Lets look at wine in RSA – I can buy retail an organic Rose from Stella Organics winery for 28.50 Rand – that’s 2.05 pounds. Add 1.81 excise makes it 3.86, add say 30p for shipping in bulk = 4.16, add 20% VAT and you get 4.99
That’s working with the retail price of an organic wine from a respected winery bottled in RSA. There’s a cheaper rose from Ashton Keller., prices at Cybercellar.com.
I think 4.99 for this wine is about right.
But I wouldn’t buy it because it is bulk-shipped; because it doesn’t have the WSB guarantee seal on the neck, because it’s doing workers in the Cape out of jobs on the bottling line, making bottles &labels, and because I am lucky enough to be able to afford a wine that comes from a winery that I can see on a map.
ref your post on twit Is there a database of unique South African wine cellar A-numbers, so that we can find out where an own label wine originates?
yes, see http://www.sawis.co.za/sealsearch.php#
But few if any own label wines in UK show A numbers. But by law they should show where they are bottled. Look for the Bottled at then a code number. Numbers starting W are UK, F France DE Germany