25% off supermarket wine: Terres de Galets 2012 Cotes du Rhone for £4 and McWilliam's Semillon at under £7

McWilliam's semillon and Terres de Galets Cotes du Rhone

It seems like all the supermarkets are offering 25% off six bottles of wine at the moment - I've taken advantage in recent weeks at Tesco and Sainsbury's.

McWilliam's Mount Pleasant Elizabeth 2005 is really brilliant at £6.75 a bottle, a proper white wine that warranted its original £9 price in the first place. Speaking of real wine, that's how Jancis Robinson described the red I went for to complete the Tesco case with the McWilliam's semillon - Finest Somontano, a Spanish region that was new to me and an unshowy wine that had a savoury finish, like tea without sugar.

Then over at Sainsbury's this week I picked up some of the Terres de Galets 2012, a Cotes du Rhone that makes for a good house red at the daft price of just over £4 a bottle when you buy six. It's a wine I like, especially for the price, but you don't have to take my word for it as a quick Google search shows it's won a medal or two.

Morrisons, Waitrose and M&S are also currently offering similar 25% reductions on their wine selections, so it's well worth stocking up on a few bottles. Depending on your finances, you can pick up some good cheap wines or you can take the chance to try something more interesting than you could usually afford.

These offers are great for consumers - but not without concern for independent wine shops which presumably lose out on a fair amount of trade as a result.

My 10 top tips for buying cheap wine

Cheap doesn't always equal good value. As a general rule, the less you pay for something, the less likely it'll be of good quality. So I'd always say beware false economies and, if you have a bit more spare cash, spending just that little bit more can be well worth it.

But that doesn't mean expensive stuff will always be great, or cheap stuff will always be rubbish. If you don't have much to spend, you just need to be selective, and a bit lucky.

My advice for buying cheap wine is based simply on my own experience - so feel free to agree, disagree or add your own top tips.

1. Ignore half-price wine offers in supermarkets

These half-price offers would be great if they were applied at random and on rotation to all the wines in a retailer's range... but they're not. You can find better value wines not on offer.

2. Use supermarket 25% off promotions

These are applied across the whole range (apart from usually the very high-end stuff) and you typically get the discount if you buy six or 12 bottles. A good tactic here is to mix up a few very cheap (but good) bottles - treat these as your "house" or weekday wines - with a few much more interesting ones with the money you've saved.

3. Shop at specialist wine shops

It's become a bit of a wine writer's cliche to say it, but it's true. This is where the all important concept of value rather than cheapness comes in - you're more likely to find interesting or memorable wines in these shops, as wine is their reason for being - it's their speciality rather than a means of driving sales of other items.

4. Go for France, Spain, Argentina and Portugal

I generally find these countries a good bet for cheaper wines - especially reds - by that I mean around the £5-7 mark. Spain in particular seems a top choice for good value wines at the moment, both for classic styles and more new wave examples.

5. Tread carefully elsewhere

On the other hand, if I fancy trying the wines of, say, the USA, South Africa or New Zealand, I might spend a bit more rather than focus on the bargain end, here in the UK at least. Oz Clarke said similar, and if there's anyone who knows his stuff, it's Oz.

6. Shop around

This might seem a bit obvious, but use different retailers. One day you might pick up a bottle in Selfridges or Harvey Nichols, the next it might be Tesco or Aldi. There's good and bad value all over the place, so keep an eye out and take advantage when you spot a good deal, whether for a fancy or a simple bottle of wine.

7. Use the web

Another obvious one, but it is a brilliant tool for finding the best wine deals. And the beauty of it is that while building up a case online you can open another tab in your browser and Google any wine you're thinking of getting to find out more and see what other people and experts thought of it before you commit.

8. Read, read, read and find wine experts you trust

There's no quick fix for this one, but it'll pay dividends - it'll take time and lots of reading to work out who you like and whose tastes are similar to your own. I regularly keep an eye on the blogs and sites of Jamie Goode, Tim Atkin, Jancis Robinson and many, many others. Not just for individual wine recommendations, but general winey titbits.

9. Use social media

This links in with the previous two tips - make use of social media. Following a mix of experts and enthusiasts on Twitter is a great way to learn more about wine.

10. Get clues from the label

It's true the label isn't always a good barometer of what's in the bottle, but sometimes you can pick up little clues to help you. For instance does the label name the winemaker, does it give specifics about the winemaking site and method (eg it was made naturally, unfiltered, from a specific vineyard etc). This is a tricky area as a lot of these things can easily cross over into marketing bumf, but sometimes you just get a sense this is a wine someone's cared about rather than just churned out.

A bargain cheap red wine – Aldi Côtes du Rhône 2011 at £3.65

Côtes du Rhône, £3.65 at Aldi

I think this is brilliant value at £3.65. Yes, if you can afford a tenner for your "house wine" then fair enough, but if like many people you don't have loads of cash and you want a decent red wine for glugging on the sofa, I think this is better than many bottles you'd get for five or six quid.

At this price I'd expect a wine to go one of two ways: too sweet and jammy if from the New World, or completely dilute and lacklustre if, as in this case, it came from the Old World. But this manages to avoid both – it's got nice red fruit flavours, it's balanced and it's easy drinking.

At this price it's obviously not going to be amazingly complex, but it's like one of those great value house red wines you'd be served in a carafe at a low-key French bistro. So it works a treat with an easy midweek meal – a ready meal maybe, a pizza, something else that takes minutes to make. It went nicely with pasta and pesto.

Maybe we should be concerned at how anyone can sell a wine this cheap. Who's losing out somewhere along the line? But then again, there are not necessarily any ethical guarantees if you splash out silly money either.

When you think of clothes I do cringe when I see Primark or Asda selling tops for, say, £3 – sweatshops come to mind – but then again expensive high fashion ain't necessarily ethical either. And perhaps there's a lot of corruption in expensive wine too – drinkers of fine wine will have to be sure their own bottles are super ethical before they criticise poorer shoppers who have less choice in what they buy. But you do wonder what the producers get from wine at this price.

Anyway purely from a bargain point of view this is a great buy. It also gets better after it's been open for a bit, so maybe try pouring it into a jug for the full Parisian bistro effect to get a bit of air to it, or just leave it in your glass for 10 minutes or so while your food's cooking.

The problem with expensive wine

Wine writers would love it if the general public spent just a little bit more on wine. The average retail price of a bottle in the UK at the moment is around £5. As wine writers regularly tell us, more than £2.50 of that fiver goes on tax. So on a £5 bottle of wine, less than £2.50 covers everything else – the packaging, the label, the marketing, the transportation and - last and almost least - some pennies on the wine itself. So it's all about mass-production and churning out a reliable, consistent product (gluggable wine) year in year out, with little variation.

But wine lovers like to think of the stuff as noble fruit of the land. They love the fact that the same variety of grape produces such amazingly different liquid when grown in different places; the fact that a wine's flavours can interweave with your memory and take you to another place. And the bonus is while trading up you're supporting an artisan winemaker who cares about what he or she is making and the land they're making it from.

But I think there's a bit of a problem for your average consumer when it comes to spending more on wine. I bet most people only tend to treat themselves a few times a year; at Christmas and on special occasions. And the problem is that when they do, they might be underwhelmed.

Why? Because I reckon when casual drinkers treat themselves to a fancy wine, what they expect to get is an increasingly smooth and fruity version of what they usually drink. Something that instantly makes them go wow, that's smooth, it's beautiful, like nectar. But really a lot of better wines are an acquired taste. For example the texture might actually be more chewy, it might feel gravelly almost, compared to your £5 bottle. And the flavours might be savoury, or just downright strange, rather than fruity and easy-drinking. Or your fancy wine might seem watery somehow, just lacking in some oomph, a bit like eating a pale Golden Delicious instead of your usual bright Pink Lady.

It's like the first time in your life you tried dark chocolate, or an olive, or your dad gave you a taster of his whisky - just so completely different from what you were used to. Snobs pretend they came out of the womb drinking obscure natural Beaujolais or West Coast IPA or listening to whatever the trendy band of the moment is, but they didn't. Most of us grew up on Phil Collins and Blue Nun; Queen and Hofmeister. Our tastes, and fashions, change over time.

Which makes things tricky for critics and indie wine shops, who want people to enjoy the good stuff. It's better, and it's made with care. But although it's a total passion of mine, I understand people who'd rather stick to their cheaper, reliable bottle. Getting into wine can be a slow-burner and needs time and money.

Understandably, loads of people just want to get a bit pissed on the cheap, and if it's a tasty wine then it's a bonus.