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Ever heard of something called the wine sweet spot?
In a nutshell, it’s the Goldilocks amount of money to spend on a bottle of wine.
The price should get you a decent quality drink, from a producer that isn’t exploiting its workers, with a price tag that won’t cripple you financially.
What is the price? Well, it starts from £8, any less than that and we’re dealing with the law of diminishing returns.
And the sweet spot caps out at around £15, so you don’t want to be spending much more than that, especially when at the supermarket.
It all goes back to February of this year, when Chancellor Rachel Reeves confirmed that tax on a bottle of vino in the UK is now decided on by alcoholic strength, to disincentivise people from drinking higher strength bottles.
Before then, there was something in place called ‘alcohol easement’, which simplified alcohol excise duty by taxing all wines between 11.5% and 14.5% ABV as though they were 12.5% ABV.
To help get your head around the new system, you can use Bibendum’s ‘Vinonomics’ guide, which shows you, visually, what you are paying for in a given bottle of wine.
For instance, on an £8 bottle of wine at 12.5% ABV, excise duty has risen by 10p a bottle, to £2.77, but you’re only paying £1.56 for the actual wine, meaning that the increase has gone into the retail price. The rest is made up of the retailer margin, VAT, packaging and logistics.
Interestingly, if you’re buying a £15 bottle at 12.5% ABV, the money you’ve spent on the actual wine shoots up to £4.16, illustrating that the more you pay, the better the quality of the wine you’ll be drinking.
Move up higher, alcohol-wise, to 13% ABV, and the duty goes up to £2.88 a bottle, and on 13.5%, £2.99 of the price you pay for a bottle of wine is tax.
If you think about it though, at the other end of the price spectrum, all the same factors are in place on a £5 bottle of wine, so you’ll only actually be paying pennies for the wine in the bottle.
Really though, it all depends on how much you can afford, as £15 for a mid-week session wine is over my budget.
So, if you can get to it, I’d say £8 to £10 is the price you want to be hovering around. And, here are some of my recent favourites within that price bracket:
Waitrose, Blueprint Californian Chardonay, USA, 13% ABV, £8
Look out for ‘Lodi’ on Californian wine bottles, this region in the central valley of California is an Aladdin’s cave of old vines and grape varieties from Spain, Portugal, Italy and France. More Chardonnay is grown than any other white grape, and they do it well, with opulent and creamy flavours of custard apple, macadamia nut and a deliciously peachy finish.
Tesco Finest Soave Superiore Classico, Italy, 13% ABV, £8.50
Soave gets a bad rap for being bland and neutral. Not this one, given that a proportion of of the Garganega grapes have been left to age in small oak barrels for 10 months. This gives the wine a lovely buttery, mineral, opulent-yet-still-bone-dry flavour with a lip-smacking freshness on the finish. The correct pronunciation is ‘so-ah-vey’, not ‘so-w-ve’. In case you’re wondering.
Morrisons The Best Pecorino, Italy, 13% ABV, £8.50
Hands down, one of the best whites I tried at Morrisons’ recent autumn/winter tasting event. This white is dry, super ripe, juicy, orchard appley and blooming delicious. Pecora means ‘sheep’ in Italian; the hungry creatures that grazed amongst the vines and made a snack of the grapes. So, we’re renaming this, ‘the sheep wine’.
Tesco Finest Valle de Leyda Chardonnay, Chile, 13% ABV, £9
The Tesco wine range is really delivering at the moment, teeming with award-winning wines like this one. A silver medal winner at the prestigious IWSC (international wine and spirits competition), you can see why. Fresh, rich, slightly savoury in style, saline and lemon sherbety. It’s made by a cracking producer in Luis Felipe Edwards, which explains the top quality.
Baron de Guers Piquepoul Rosé, France, 11% ABV, Sainsbury’s, £10
I’m all in favour of rosé in autumn/winter, it’s a style that should be sipped year-round. This ripe and peachy rosé is unusually crafted from the Piquepoul grape, along with 25% Grenache for additional richness and colour. Vineyards are on the Mediterranean side of the Languedoc region in southern France, hence the wine tastes sun-drenched and coastal fresh.
Waitrose Blueprint Malbec, Argentina, 13% ABV, £8
This is exceptional value for wine from the Uco Valley in Argentina; the benchmark region for Malbec, high altitude at the foothills of the Andes. The altitude and cooler temperature gives the wines a beautiful freshness, lovely texture, plum, damson and a delightful cherry sourness on the finish.
Exceptional by Asda Barossa Valley Shiraz, 14.5% ABV, Australia, £8.03
If you’re looking for intensity in a wine, this is your bottle. Made predominantly from Shiraz, with a small amount of Cabernet Sauvignon and Petite Syrah for added voluptuousness. It’s all black fruits, juicy bramble fruit, beefy tannins (not literally) with a balanced finish. A mouthful of winter, basically.
Co-op Irresistible Carignan, France, 14% ABV, £8.15
A perky, medium-bodied red with boat loads of black cherry and violet notes, and some top draw intensity to it. From the Maule Valley in Chile, with an abundance of old vines, which are famous for delivering concentration and complexity. There’s a fun rusticity to it, making it a fantastic mid-week, casual sipper.
Grao Vasco Dao Vinho Tinto DOC 2023, Portugal, 13% ABV, Tesco, £8.50
For me, Portuguese reds are the wine equivalent of a super comfortable, good quality pillow; soft and silky with plump, juicy black fruit. This one is a great case in point, with plush, plummy fruit and a spicy kick on the finish. It’s made form Tinta Roriz and Touriga Nacional, two of the main port-producing grapes, hence the pillowy texture.
Chateau Les Trois Manoirs Medoc, France, 13% ABV, Aldi, £8.99
Merlot-dominant, which is unusual for the Médoc on the left bank, as it’s normally a Cabernet Sauvignon haven. I’ve put in my tasting notes, ‘very gluggable, soft tannins, plums and chocolate’, along with 3/3 stars. For under £10, this is great value and we’re still squarely in the sweet spot wine zone.
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