Wine is one of life’s great joys – so why, asks Jason Yapp, do major retailers do such a dismal job of flogging it?
I have several items to declare: bags of prejudice, a heap of self-interest, a smidgen of latent snobbery and chips on both shoulders. But even accounting for all of the above it can’t just be me who finds buying wine in a supermarket a joyless, soulless and utterly dispiriting experience. Wine is one of nature’s most precious gifts, and its acquisition should be a joy, not an ordeal.
Most of the major multiples employ a smattering of Masters of Wine (of whom there are only 288 in existence), so there is no shortage of in-house product knowledge, but sadly this is seldom evident at the point of sale. I think the principal problem here is the buying remit — ‘squeezing suppliers by the knackers until their eyes water’ is the principal thrust, whatever anyone else may tell you — which begins to take the fun out of the equation.
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