JUST WILLIAMS
Just how worried should you be about supermarkets? Imagine that you had a friend who would taste all the most significant wines from the multiple grocers’ autumn line-ups and then feed back an honest assessment of their quality. Well, you have, and his name is David Williams
W
e do the X so you don’t have
to” is a surprisingly resilient bit of marketing boilerplate.
In the last few days alone I’ve spotted
it on the vans of a local plumbing firm
(“dirty work”), an estate agent’s mailout
(“leg work”) and a Stonewall initiative for
improving conditions for LBGT+ people in the work place (“hard work”).
And so, in the spirit of another deathless
cliché, if it ain’t broke, I’m happy to say that I too have done my bit of labour-saving labour. Over the past couple of months
I’ve tasted my way through hundreds of
supermarket wines to prepare the latest in
my occasional series of reports on the state of play in the multiple grocers for Wine
however – as I returned to large-scale
market as a coherent ranging strategy.
of the multiples was largely gleaned from
aisle at Lidl, which has always seemed to
supermarket tastings after a more or less two-year hiatus in which my impression sporadic samples – is how and in what ways their ranges have changed, both individually and as a sector.
What follows then are a few headline
developments which I feel may be of particular relevance to independent
merchants – the shifts in emphasis and focus that in ways both good and bad
will impact your business and shared customers the most.
Finding the Found and the Loved & Found
Merchant readers – and all so you don’t
The needle on my bullshitometer flips deep
been boom times for supermarket wine
track wines. It’s not that the wines
have to.
These pandemic years have of course
(and other booze) departments, just as they have for many in the independent
sector. Last year saw double-digit growth
in BWS sales across the grocers, although a dip of 6% for the sector in August
(according to Nielsen) suggests things
might be moving back towards pre-Covid
levels as customers return to the on-trade. What was most interesting to me,
into red whenever I hear supermarkets trumpeting unusual, or off-the-beaten-
themselves are bad necessarily (although they may be). It’s more that my innate cynicism about supermarket margins
and buying practices suggests that wine
quality probably came second to price. I’m always suspicious that the supermarket in question is making a marketing virtue out of buying necessity, passing off a slightly
random set of purchases made on the spot
THE WINE MERCHANT november 2021 32
That remains my default setting
whenever I find myself browsing the wine me to be a reactive rather than proactive wine seller, finding the cheapest parcels
and adapting its range accordingly (albeit with some occasionally excellent results),
rather than seeking out wines to fit a preexisting slot.
The needle was twitching, too, when I
noticed that both Marks & Spencer and Waitrose had introduced very similar ranges – in terms of name, price and
concept – last year. But the quality of the wines in M&S’s Found and Waitrose’s
Loved & Found selections presented a challenge to my cynicism.
In both cases, these are wines that
deserve to be found (or rediscovered):
whether it’s Chilean old-vine País (in both ranges), South African Grenache Blanc,
or Gascon Gros Manseng. Varietally true,
and with consistent quality, at reasonable
but not stupidly, unsustainably low prices (around £7 to £9), this strikes me as
being exactly what a supermarket wine
range should be, offering a safe space for
exploration to neophyte or cautious wine drinkers.
