As I said last week, price is not the same as value. Just because supermarkets have a monopoly on sub-£7 wines doesn’t mean they are cheapest for everything. Rather, they rely on us believing that everything we buy from them is keenly priced, when in reality it may well not be, especially if it’s not on promotion and involves a famous name. Supermarkets are generally not so good at providing less well-known alternatives that offer better value.
I was reminded of this the other day at a tasting put on by the very smart wine merchant Haynes, Hanson & Clark (with that name, they could easily be a firm of solicitors, couldn’t they?), which has branches in Chelsea and Stow-on-the-Wold in the Cotswolds. Unaffordable? Surprisingly not. For example, they have a fantastic selection of clarets, starting with the smartly bottled Château Frontenac Bordeaux Supérieur 2019 (14.5%) at £10.95 a bottle (or £58.20, or £9.70 a bottle, for a case of six). And it would be so much better to buy their Faure-Beausejour 2019, a fleshy, ripe, merlot-dominated fronsac at £12.35 (or £65.70 by the half-case), than most of the indifferent Saint-Émilions you find on supermarket shelves. (Incidentally, supermarkets do score when they go off-piste in this way, too: Tesco, for instance, has an absolutely cracking, bordeaux-like bergerac right now called Eglise Saint Jacques (13%) for just £6.50. (Bergerac is just next door to its more famous neighbour.)
