You may want a more impressive-looking bottle on the table, but some of the best-value wines on the shelf are own-label. A couple of recent chats with supermarket buyers revealed why: they can use their huge buying power to cut costs, they don’t have to carry expensive promotional budgets and often being wannabe winemakers themselves take a certain amount of pride in the wines they blend.
Morrisons is doing a particularly good job at the moment. You’d be pushed to find a better red for the price than its gutsy Pinotage 2015 (£4; 13.5% abv) – it’s the perfect wine to pour for a barbecue. The same store’s Signature range is even better. It’s hard to find a good albariño for less than £10 these days, but Morrisons’ Signature Fervenza Albariño 2015 (£8, 13% abv), from Rias Baixas, delivers the goods, as does the textbook Signature Chablis 2014 (£10; 12.5% abv). That said, chablis is generally one of the most reliable own-label wines, thanks to two excellent operators, Jean-Marc Brocard and the La Chablisienne cooperative; it obviously helps, too, that consumers are willing to pay more for it than pinot grigio
Other solid, own-label wines to look out for are barbera d’Asti (almost invariably better than cheap chianti), Douro and Dão reds (Asda has both in its Extra Special range at the ridiculously good price of £5), and rioja, provided you avoid the cheapest bottles. Majestic has a properly lush 2009 Rioja Reserva in its Definition range (14% abv) for £9.99 on the “mix six” deal, which is incredibly good value for a seven-year-old wine that’s drinking perfectly; it picked up a gold medal at the recent International Wine Challenge to prove it.
Sometimes, though, it takes a challenge to your market share to improve quality. Cava, say, is far better value than most proseccos at a comparable price. I wouldn’t touch most of Asda’s £5 proseccos with a bargepole, but the same store’s fresh-tasting Cava Brut (£4.70; 11.5% abv) is perfectly decent and would go down a treat with a Friday night fish-and-chip supper. As would a well-chilled, freshly opened bottle of Tesco’s Finest Manzanilla Sherry (15% abv) at just £5.50 for 50cl.
Own-label champagne, too, is at least as good as the so-called “grand marques”. Waitrose has a particularly good range, including a seductively creamy Blanc de Blancs (£22.99; 12.5% abv) and a sumptuously rich 2005 Vintage for £24.99, which I would snap up while it’s available. Much as I admire the new generation of British sparkling wines, these prices do make them look a little expensive.
