Times are tough, money is tight. Nobody actually wants a recession. However when businesses and retailers are feeling the pinch there are always some bargains to be had. We’ve seen discounts of 75% common place over the last 12 months – mainly on items that are hugely over inflated in the first place like kitchens and sofas, but it means you can get a good deal at last. The Bank of England base rate is at an all time low of 0.5% and VAT has been temporarily cut to 15%, all to try and get the nation spending again.

So most items are cheaper now than they’ve been for quite some time – but not wine! Why not? Well, let’s start with 36 pence duty increase over the last 18 months – with VAT chargable on this increase. But that’s just on still wine under 15%abv. Anything fizzy has been hammered even harder, and any higher alcohol wines like Amarone are subject to higher duty rates! Let’s not forget the Houses of Parliament have the only bars in the UK that are exempt from VAT, and they have a wonderful wine cellar of all the best wines funded by us the taxpayer!

But that’s only a part of the problem. The other reason wine prices have shot up is the pound has lost 25% of it’s value over major foreign currencies. Today it was right down to 1.06 Euro, and fears are that it will reach 1:1 very shortly. This would be absolute disaster for the UK wine trade. 18 months ago the pound traded at 1.40 Euros.

Put this into perspective!

If a wine cost a UK importer 4 Euros 18 months ago, it translated to £2.85 plus £1.24 duty, plus 72p VAT which was £4.81 per bottle – the importer and retailer then have to add their margin.

Today (or very shortly) that 4 Euros would be £4, plus £1.60 duty, plus 84p VAT which is £6.44, an icrease of 34%. With transport and the importer and retailer margins – with VAT added – that  wine would retail at £9.99 probably more in a traditional wine shop.

So we know why prices have increased.

What should I do to keep the cost of my wine down?

Well, there’s still time to make some canny savings but it’s difficult to commit to spending when all your instincts are telling you to save. But more price increases are on their way so if you buy now you will save money. The pound is likely to continue to weaken at least till a general election when we can have a change of government and start rebuilding the economy. But that will not be an overnight recovery so the pound is likely to stay weak for a couple of years. However the wine trade works 4 months behind the pound! Importers will have agreed a price on the wine they’ve imported and no doubt have a Euro bank account to pay for it. It’s their next shipment of wine that’s likely to cost them an extra 10% which will be 20% by the time it filters down to the consumer. So leap in now and buy if you can spare the money! Remember this government is planning on increasing VAT in January – they say back to 17.5% but I can’t see that personally. The whole exercise of reducing VAT to 15% cost Uk business more than it saved – they were already discounting 75%, so what real difference is an extra 2.5% going to make? No, I beleive this was a smokescreen so the Government can raise VAT to 18.5% or even 20% knowing how brassic they are! This will also put the price of your wine up!

My advice is buy now – because prices WILL increase!

Is good wine bottles of First Growth Bordeaux at £1000 per bottle? Or is it a wine you can really enjoy that costs £10? Or there again is it a top class Argentine red for £30 which blows the French away on quality, let alone the price/quality ratio?

There are plenty of refined gentlemen sitting on their chesterfields, wearing a blazer and peering over their spectacles who’d tell you that good wine IS French. They’ll happily pay £40 for a bottle of Puligny Montrachet – which in fact tastes something like sucking a battery - from their wine merchant, who incidentally is also middle aged and also wears a green tweed smoking jacket. They’ll also buy expensive red Burgundy, severely lacking in fruit and severely overpriced, but be quite content because this is the wine their peers drink. Thirty years ago these were the leading wines that everyone aspired to drinking. But times change and nowhere quite so quickly as in the wine world.

Thirty years ago these people all aspired to drive a Jaguar XJS or a Mercedes 280, but would you want one now? Mechanical windows, poor economy, AM radio and the same performance you can now get from a 1.9 turbodeisel? These cars were great in their day but things have certainly moved on.

The same is true in the wine world. New world countries like Argentina and South Africa are producing some of the best wines in the world. In fact there’s now great wine coming out of virtually every wine producing country thanks to developments in technology and the sharing of information.

Over the last decade French wine sales have taken a pasting as more and more people are discovering that they can get way better quality for far less money by expanding their horizons and trying these new wines. Typically some French producers in Bordeaux and Burgundy have been in cahoots with British wine importers keeping the price of their wines artificially high. Some of these British wine merchants continue to attempt this today by playing on the old school traditions and maintaining the stuffy image and snobbery traditionally associated with fine wines, to charge a hefty premium.

The irony of all this? It’s the same upper middle class, middle aged gentlemen sitting on their chesterfields who are being overcharged. Those who will steadfastly defend the very same French wine producers who have annual meetings each vintage  to discuss what price the UK market will bear! Yes, that is how the price of fine Bordeaux is actually set! It has nothing to do with the quality of the wine, it’s based purely on the economic situation in the UK and how many punters there are out there.

Personally I wouldn’t buy any of these wines on principal. But now there’s an even better reason not to buy them – quite simply there’s far better wine from new world countries readily available at far cheaper prices. And today you no longer need a face to face interaction with a gentleman in a tweed blazer, you can simply buy it online and have your wine merchant deliver it to you for a change. Yes, times have certainly changed – and definitely for the better!

Personally I don’t follow fashion or trends but I consider myself  ‘normal’. I’m sat at my desk this morning with the door open, wearing a fleece top for warmth – which happens to be embroidered with ‘Italy v Wales 2001′. Is it really that long since I bought any new clothes? Now I come to think of it, I’ve only been into a clothes shop twice in the last ten years! But I know what I like, and that’s all I buy. I’m not controlled by advertisers with glossy magazine and TV ads, trying to part me from my money. I’ve never watched ‘Strictly Dancing’ or the ‘X Factor’. I really am out of fashion.

However, these people who tell us how to live our lives are partly responsible for one of the biggest sins of the 21st century – ‘Anything but Chardonnay’ – they’ve made Chardonnay unfashionable. Of course it’s only the feeble minded who let themselves be controlled by the media, but this still has a serious affect on wine sales in restaurants, hotels and bars, which filters back up the chain all the way to the producers. 

Wine and fashion should not mix! Fashion is all about getting weak people to part with their money. I’ve watched teenage lads wearing woolly hats in 25 degrees this summer, with baggy jeans hanging around their knees – at least that might keep them cool. All the teenage girls look like they’re auditioning for the next Star Wars film, with knee length furry boots, baggy white tops and a 10″ wide belt made from roofing felt, tucked underneath the boobs which serves no apparent purpose whatsoever. Would you take advice on which wines to drink from the people responsible for this?

I suppose the probem began when celebrities began naming their children after grapes. There are over 1000 different grape varieties so what’s the odds of picking Chardonnay first? What’s next? Verdelho? Gewurztraminer? Probably ‘Albarino’  as it’s the latest fashionable grape along with ‘Gruner Veltliner’ but that’s hardly a name for a pretty girl!

The downside of all this of course is that it’s had a negative effect on Chardonnay sales. We have some ‘fashion conscious’ friends who will simply refuse to order Chardonnay if we’re out for a meal, although they love Chablis! Personally I love a good Chardonnay, it makes some of the best white wines in the world. A lot of people are missing out on the joys of a good wine because they listen to the media. Pinot Grigio has benefitted of course, as it’s star has risen as Chardonnay’s has fallen. Our friends will automatically order the first Pinot Grigio they see on a menu, and this can be a big mistake. Chardonnay is generally a rich, full wine, often buttery with some oak. Pinot Grigio can be delicious if you find a good one, (such as Santa Margharita) but there’s a vast amount of inferior Pinot flooding the market, weak and insipid, and often not from Italy despite having an Italian name! Watch out for names like ‘Don Luigi Pinot Grigio’ and such like – closer inspection is likely to reveal that it actually comes from somewhere such as Hungary or Croatia, and very often it doesn’t even contain any Pinot Grigio, just cheaper grapes!

For those of us who may have strayed from the path and forgotten just how nice a good Chardonnay can be, here are a couple of recommendations. Try these wines - Morton Estates White Label Chardonnay & R H Philips Toasted Head Chardonnay, and I’d like to bet you’ll be proud to fly in the face of fashion and choose your wines for the right reasons – taste, quality and value. And let the crowd with the woolly hat and baggy jeans happily fritter away their hard earned cash on over priced Eastern European Garganega!