Drinking In The Dark

As long as the subtefuge continues 90% of wine purchases will continue to be under £5 says Roger Brownlie our guest columnist.

Something I preach to my journalism students is objectivity. One method to achieve this lofty goal is to imagine you are from a different planet, observing how things are done on Earth. Question everything, even the things that have been accepted wisdom for centuries. In some respects, however, it seems that the wine trade has already questioned everything.

Objectivity is difficult if you have been immersed in an industry for your whole career. Even for trained journalists, finding alternative viewpoints when so many industry methods are taken for granted is not an easy task. It’s been quite an experience over the last 12 months witnessing how the wine trade operates. Age-old theories of supply and demand are apparently fit for the spittoon. Adam Smith’s bible on economics, The Wealth of Nations, must be a load of nonsense after all.

On planet wine, during religious festivals like Christmas when demand is high, prices are allowed to drop. This is sometimes encouraged and guarantees that when demand is high margins are low and the image of the brand is damaged. Hey, how about this, wouldn’t it be a good idea if the best products in the market sold the least? This creates a situation where the worst wines with the lowest value sell the most – and the trade can minimise their profits.

I’m being facetious, but does the wine industry deliberately do everything differently? Has it always produced grapes irrespective of demand? Has it always tested the market after the product is produced? And why is wine pushed to market instead of pulled by consumers?

There is only one wine product that has managed supply and demand. Champagne is massproducing a high quality product – a sublime balancing act between exclusivity and mass production. It’s a Mercedes Benz of a beverage. The result is a sustainable price that suits both consumer and supplier and a brand image that is appropriate to its market position. All too often a brand communicates one image while the unsuspecting consumer is left to drink the reality. This is a swindle.

But wine is an evocative category. The lure of faraway places, beautiful landscapes and wholesome country life will tempt people to try almost anything. Even the £3.99 stuff. Wine sells on mystery I am told. But on return to the supermarket, vowing never to buy that £3.99 bottle again, the mystique reveals itself to be abject confusion. “That last one would dissolve a diamond so what on Earth do I try next?” the consumer asks.

Wine is a subjective product you could argue, what some savour others pour down the sink. This is a good excuse, of course, to sell poor wine. Consumers have no idea whether they are buying a good or a bad wine. Not only is the range too big, but the range in quality at the same price is too great. 90% of people know nothing about wine and this is because wine has been a disappointing purchase too many times. They simply don’t want to know any more. There is a glut of bad wine but it is objectivity that is in short supply. Imagine what they would buy if they knew something, if they were armed with information, both on the label and from the retailer.

Perhaps, (don’t shoot me down, I’m just an innocent bystander) a Ronseal approach might help trade and consumer alike? Shouldn’t a bottle explain exactly what it contains? Why is red wine in a green bottle? The result is a brown-looking liquid. Do producers want to mask the colour of their wine? I like to see the hues before I buy. I’m advised on the label that the wine contains sulphites. I want to know how many milligrams. Some like sweet wine, some dry. Exactly how much sugar does it contain? What about levels of carbohydrates?

In short, I want a label that tells me what’s in the bottle. I want to see inside the bottle and it would also be helpful if the label was in a language that I understand. Where is the wisdom in launching a wine for the UK market with a label not in plain English. In fact, I want to buy a wine that is packaged to the same standard as every other product in the supermarket and I want the retailer to stop telling me a wine is sensational when it injures my mouth to drink it.

The trade is exploiting customers’ ignorance and should be rewarding them instead. There are too few gems hidden among an enormous range of substandard wines. The sooner the industry ends this deception with greater transparency the sooner people will trade up – that holy grail of the industry. As long as this subterfuge continues, 90% of wine purchases will continue to be under £5 and 90% of consumers will still know nothing about wine. So, instead of feeling as though I were from another planet, perhaps it’s the trade that has alienated itself from its own market?