When is a half price wine not a half price wine?
At Classic Wine Direct we’re pretty upfront about what we do – we can’t compete with supermarkets on price so we offer wines from off the beaten track instead. wines are more flavoursome and interesting. However, it can be difficult for wine drinkers to understand the true value of a wine.
Back in 2006, Jean-Manuel Spriet, the then chief executive of Pernod Ricard UK, sent shockwaves through the wine trade by admitting that many of the “half price” wine deals in supermarkets were actually a rip-off.
having an important person within the wine trade admitting to being conned raised an eyebrow.
Spiret confirmed that many of deals in retail supermarkets are not deals at all. Put simply, a bottle reduced from £7.99 to £3.wines are often only worth £3.99.99 in the first place.
retails brands use the policy of marking up and then mark down. customers presume they are getting quality wine at great prices. Confused? That’s the general idea.
The industry beleives that the “mass market” wine drinker is obsessed by the £3.having a cheap wine price bracket will make retailers try different marketing tricks.
Spiret thinks consumers know they are getting misled and they get use to it. At the end of the day, it just leads to the impoverishment of the wine trade”.
Spiret’s insight provides us with a depressingly cynical view of the way wine is both sold by the big retailers and supplied by the big wine brands. it gives the impression that big retailers view their customers to be lazy and ignorant.
In many ways Spiret was simply highlighting the types of marketing practices that are in play in many industries and it would be unfair to single out the wine trade as unique in using such tactics.
Given that supermarkets represent two thirds of wine sales in the UK, these practices also have a direct effect on the public perception of the value of wine.
do they really get a bottle for £7.99 of value from a £3.99 bottle then it follows that it will be much harder for the independent wine retailer to sell something whose real value is (and always was) £7.99.
this type of marketing leaves it open to all sorts of underhand practices.
However, if the political mood continues to be against discount selling for alcohol, it will be interesting to see how the big retailers find a real price for wines they have knowingly mis-sold for the last 10 years.
