How cheap is too cheap?

Thoughts on some ridiculously cheap wines from Aldi and what that means for the struggling independent trade.

Every so often a wine will appear on a supermarket shelf that will at best leave people scratching their heads or worse pulling their hair out because the price is so low. By people I mean those in the wine trade, not customers. Customers will be stampeding to buy something like the Cairanne that Aldi was offering for £3.49 in December 2024. When I told my neighbour about it, he cleared them out.

But as a discerning, ethical wine writer, should I pretend that such wines don’t exist? Daniel Grigg from Museum Wines (aka Wined-up Merchant on Instagram) wrote a thing on Substack about this criticising Tom Gilbey (aka the Wine Wanker - I really need my own snappy social media moniker) for recommending an £8 Cremant de Loire from Aldi (“absolutely nuts”, apparently) when he should be using his influence - over 700,000 followers on Instagram - to help the independent wine trade.

Tom Gilbey in action

I know Grigg and like what he sells a lot. So much so that the latest Critic Wine Club offer is with none other than Museum Wines. I particularly recommend Natte Valleij Cinsault Darling 2024. Down from £26.99 to £22.99. Hurry offer ends this week!

But I’d argue that the primary job of a wine writer/ internet personality is to find interesting wines at good prices for the reader rather than help the independent wine trade. That means including supermarkets as that’s where the majority of people buy their wines. When I wrote a column for the Guardian, I always included a mixture of supermarkets and independents. There’s no point only including a wine that’s available from a bottle shop in Dalston and while you can buy mail order, most people don’t buy wine by the case. We have to deal with the world as it is, not how we might want it to be.

Part of the reason Tom has so many followers is that he’s honest (he describes prosecco as tasting like “pee pee”), funny and recommends wines that people can buy. At the Times, Jane MacQuitty has lasted so long because her readers trust her. That trust would quickly evaporate if she decided that certain wines were too cheap - let the customer decide. And indeed I see that she also recommended that Aldi cremant as did Decanter. If you write a popular wine column and Aldi is doing a spectacularly good value bottle and you don’t mention it, then you are doing something wrong.

Back to that Cairanne, Aldi were originally offering it for £8.99, which was still very good value. Is that too cheap? A winemaker I know put together a blend for Aldi a few years back and he praised them for being very good to deal with. They pay cash upfront and take large quantities. No mucking about with credit unlike most of the wine trade. If you are a hard-pressed co-op or negociant in the South of France or an English sparkling wine producer in Sussex and someone offers you cash for your excess wine, it’s hard to say no.

It’s not the fault of Aldi and Lidl that the world is overstocked with wine. They are just doing their job, looking for good cheap wine to sell to their customers. There are more bargains to come, I am afraid. For many producers, the choice is between making tiny margins (or even making a loss but getting some cash in) or sitting on a load of unsold stock which costs money and isn’t going to last forever.

As for that £3.49 price, Aldi are clearly losing money on every bottle - see Gavin Quinney’s ever useful guide to where every penny in a bottle of wine goes - but it makes a good publicity stunt and brings in customers who will then buy that gigantic paddling pool from the middle aisle. Again, it’s not your nice local wine merchant wrapping a bottle up and suggesting that it will be nice with gazpacho but that is not how most people buy their wines. And who knows, your Aldi shopper might also visit their independent retailer for special bottles occasionally. My friend who cleared the shop of Cairanne, is also an enthusiastic consumer of English sparkling wine.

If I was an independent merchant, what would frighten me more than £8 cremant at Aldi is the Wine Society making a loss so that it can absorb the costs of 2024 budget instead of passing them on to members. That’s a direct rival offering wines at prices nobody else can compete thanks to the unique way the Society is funded. The business has lots of cash which it is using to cushion the extra expenses which come to between “£4.5 million and £5 million in duty and associated costs within a single year”, according to the Drinks Business. Most indies don’t have this option.

Rather than Aldi or Lidl, it’s things like rising duty and other taxes, soaring energy costs and unnecessary bureaucracy (hello the slow motion disaster that is the Welsh deposit return scheme) which is crippling the independent sector. Furthermore people are drinking less wine and they have less money. People are getting poorer while wine is getting more expensive. It’s like the decline of the high street, there’s all kinds of tinkering about the edges but the truth is that people use independent shops like butchers, wine merchants and delicatessens when they have a bit of money to spend. Don’t blame Aldi, it’s the economy, stupid.