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How To Buy Good Wines Cheaply
No
matter what you may have heard elsewhere, buying good wines cheaply is easy.
Simply follow these useful tips and you’ll be well on the way to finding great
value wines without compromising quality.
Firstly,
always “back the little guy”. By this, we mean hunting down small, boutique
wineries, which don’t have large advertising budgets to convince you to buy
their wines, or cash to buy space on supermarket shelves. Instead, the only way
that they can get their wines noticed is to ensure that the quality is of a
very high standard. Wines of this type can be bought from retailers who support
small producers.
When
looking for a decent, cheap wine, a good tip is to seek out less fashionable
regions. The wine trade is obsessed with fashion and the result of this can be
a compromise in quality. Wine estates in
and
for example, are often more known for their investments by millionaires, rather
than the wine itself. So to enjoy good wines without the fashion tag, you
should search out the retailers who source their wines from places that make
similar wines. Chilean Cabernet Merlot is a good alternative to
Grenache/Syrah blends are a perfect substitute to Chateauneuf du Pape and
Chilean Chardonnay is to Chablis. And don’t forget New World fizz if you are
looking for a cheaper alternative to
Another
useful hint is to avoid wine brands and heavily advertised wines. Why? Well,
large brand wines are produced in significant volumes, using mass production
techniques, and as winemakers look to achieve consistency, they compromise
quality by using artificial processes such as adding sugars and adding citric
acid to their wines. In addition, they heavily promote and market their wines,
meaning that significant mark ups are likely.
Similarly,
big name bargains are a definite no no. Although, through their buying power,
supermarkets and large wine retailers can force producers to sell wines at
incredibly low prices, they can only do this at the expense of the quality of
the wine. To make ends meet, producers will be forced to plant on land that
isn’t good enough to bear the region’s name or worse, they will increase yields
and dilute the wines. So while a bottle of Chablis for a fiver may sound great,
we guarantee that it will leave you feeling disappointed!
Finally,
make sure that you buy your wine from an online wine retailer. Online wine
retailers will offer you far better value for money compared to supermarkets
and ordinary merchants, as they don’t incur many of the building costs, which
are then passed on to you, the customer. Also, as online retailers aren’t
restricted by shelf space, they can offer an unlimited range of wines that
ordinary merchants don’t necessarily have space for.