How much would you normally spend on a bottle of wine?

I tend to agree with you.
We really liked a red wine from Sainsbury’s that seemed to be on permanent special offer of £5. I wish we had stocked up on it as they stopped selling it.

I recently ordered a selection of red wines on special offer from Ocado that were normally up to £13 a bottle and have yet to find one we like out of them.

Interesting, and just demonstrates that individual taste is still the over-riding factor. I have rarely found a Malbec to my taste, yet have never had a Rioja (Riserva) that I didn’t like. Use external advice for guidance, but have faith in your own palate.

Glad we aren’t the only ones. I emailed the producer to see if the wine was available elsewhere maybe under a different name but they didn’t bother to reply.

I joined the Wine Society after your recommendation in my old wine convo Malcolm.

I contacted them, and let them pick me a box of 12 smooth reds but didn’t actually like any of them as they were still too acidic for me. They were all around £5-£6 and I did wonder whether to try again and select them myself this time from the reviews.

…if you’re able :-))

Yes, Ian I did not over-indulge. I can report that the wine was a very good accompaniment to the lunch and was very pleasant to drink so we managed to finish the bottle. I have also put it on the list for the next Sainsbury’s delivery.

Prosecco seems to be the lunchtime tipple of choice around these parts in pubs and restaurants but I am not that impressed and think it tends to be overpriced. We have a couple of bottles of M&S Prosecco that have not been opened yet so one fine day in the near future we might see how that compares with the version supplied in licensed premises.

If you haven’t already, Peter, you really should try some Frankenwein from the Franconia region of Bavaria in Germany [principally around Wurzburg and Bamberg]. It comes in a specially shaped bottle and is drier than many other German wines but has a luscious fruitiness. The problem is getting hold of it over here. I used to be able to buy it in London at sensible prices but it is rarely stocked now.

…and here’s me thinking that laying down was what followed drinking the stuff, not preceded it.

The trouble with this strategy is they might simply be £7.50 bottles overpriced in the first place. Half price wine is like half price sofas – that’s all they’re likely to be worth.

Nonetheless, what Alan does is better than paying £10 for the same wine, which is the other possible outcome in this case.

Noting the source of the advice is from a former retail executive called “Mark Price”, is “Mark” short for “Market Then Markup Accordingly”?

There are one or two wines we like and buy regularly at their £9-£10 price, but from time to time they are on offer at £7.50 so we buy an extra one or two. I am not sure whether we are buying what a connoisseur might call an inferior wine, but if we enjoy it and it is at an affordable price for regular drinking, then what’s not to like?

I must say I wonder how such a product can come all the way from New Zealand, bear all the trucking, warehousing and merchandising costs in the UK plus duty and VAT, and go on the shelf at £10 or less. I accept that what we are buying is just a comfortable alcoholic drink rather than a fine wine.

I discovered a lot of foreign wine is not bottled at source but shipped to the UK where it is then bottled and maybe blended then bottled.

Yes, when I was considering the price of wine I was thinking that most of the imported wine from the southern hemisphere, and possibly also California, probably comes in giant tanks and is then bottled here. The cost of shipping glass bottles and cardboard around the world would be prohibitive at the everyday price point. Superior wines can carry the cost and mainly come from continental Europe [which has little need for imported wine from America, Chile, Argentina, New Zealand, Australia and South Africa]. Having such imports does exert a degree of competitive pressure on the French, German and Italian wine producers so it’s good to look around and there is no doubt that some of the antipodean wines are more appealing to the untutored palate than their European heritage and vintage versions.

Wine medals were brought up on TV not that long ago and are not as good a bet as you think.

You might want to have a read of:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/foodanddrink/wine/11617630/The-truth-about-wine-awards-why-medals-dont-mean-great-bottles.html

You can even buy your own awards to stick on wine.

Just bought 6 bottles of white Burgundies from M&S. A Sparks offer of 25% off and a £5 off a >£35 spend brought the cost to £48.62. As a bottle lasts us at least 2 meals, and often 3, it’ll be a while before we work our way through them but I’ll try to remember to report back.

You can get vacuVin – a hand pump that removes some of the air through a rubber stopper. Used it and it works. I have seen nitrogen cans to replace the air. We use nothing on the level of wine we drink and it seems OK after 2 days with just the cork replaced. Not sure why you would want to keep it any longer than a couple of mealtimes.