Wine and the obsession with choice

Some wine critics are very earnest.

Like a pope standing between the masses and enlightenment, they taste wine after wine after wine and score each one out of 100. The suggestion seems to be it's a totally cold and objective process; they're scoring wines against set criteria for a public duty, a job that a well-programmed robot could surely do one day. Enjoyment doesn't come into it.

Which keeps things nice and simple. You might have a wine rated at 96, another at 94, another at 91 and another at 90.

Why would you ever buy the lowest-ranked wines? By this logic there is absolutely no reason to. Someone with encyclopaedic knowledge, and the memory powers to compare all that knowledge in one sip to within one percentile of accuracy, has told us which are the best wines and which are the worst. Which ones to buy and which to avoid.

This is the Ofsted of wine.

Thatcher's governments (and perhaps Reagan's in the US) - and each administration since - promoted an obsession with choice. And with league tables. Choice in public services. The freedom to choose. You can even choose which hospital to have an operation in. Again, as with the wine, I think I'll choose the good one please.

Supermarkets are masters at this. Shelves packed full with wine, loads at under £7 a bottle. You go into an independent wine shop and there might be only seven or eight bottles under a tenner in the whole store. A lack of choice, so it seems.

We're always chasing something better, sipping a wine while looking over the glass to the next label, and the one after that, wondering if they will be 1% better or worse and forgetting to enjoy the moment.

It's a bit like being lucky enough to experience an amazing event, a live concert or football match say, and spending more time worrying about capturing it on your camera than feeling it.

We're constantly choosing and comparing, and in wine this obsession's been fuelled by the 100-point scores.

The best thing in the world at a brief moment in your life - that fleeting moment - might be a cheap bottle of Cotes du Rhones with a plate of cheese. Whether the wine is a rustic 85 or 87 or a 93 or 95 may be irrelevant. The moment is what it's about, and moments are personal and social, and they're there and then they're gone.

Half-price supermarket wines, double-price Sunday dinners and non-discount Laithwaites wine vouchers

I walked past a pub recently that had a big banner outside which read: "Two-for-one main courses all day Monday to Saturday!"

Imagine if that poster had actually read: "Double-price Sunday dinners every week!" I don't think it'd have had quite the same positive effect, but it would really be saying the same thing.

This week I received the latest mail-shot from Laithwaites Wines, who have some good value wines but who aren't scared to run a promotion or two. In the envelope was a brochure offering various mixed cases of wine, along with a couple of big, shiny vouchers. One was a voucher worth £50! And the other was a voucher worth £10.

Why would anyone opt to use the £10 voucher over the £50 one, you might wonder. Because they're not really vouchers as such: you can only use each one against certain cases of wines in the brochure. The £50 one, for example, could only be used against a selection of £89.99 cases that are actually part of 'Wine Plans' (Laithwaites then send you another case every three months at full price unless you opt out). The thing is though, you can order one of these cases for £39.99 direct from the Laithwaites website, without the voucher.

I don't mean to pick on just Laithwaites: as a nation we seem to have a bit of an obsession with voucher codes and discounts in general. Supermarkets are the experts when it comes to running discounts that aren't always quite as they seem. So-called half-price wines are nothing of the sort: the wines are priced artificially high for a few weeks to enable the dramatic discount. I've found that you usually get better value by choosing a supermarket wine that isn't reduced, than by buying a "half-price" one.

The problem is, all of this makes us more confused about the true value of stuff. Which might suit the companies in the short term (I don't know whether or not it does in the long term), but I'm not sure it's good for consumers.

There's definitely a place for promotions - I like to feel as though I'm getting a bargain as much as the next person. Shopping around can really pay off and you can pick up real bargains every now and then. When supermarkets run 25% off the whole of their wine range, for instance, it's certainly worth buying a case if you'd usually shop there anyway.

But are we becoming a bit too obsessed with the need to feel like we've bagged a discount whenever we buy something? Has the internet, which makes it so easy to compare prices, fuelled this obsession?

Shouldn't we just be happy to pay a fair price for stuff?

Supermarkets: bringers of affordable food & drink to the masses, or unethical corporate giants?

I chipped in to an interesting mini-debate on twitter yesterday about supermarkets.

Daniel Primack of Around Wine said: "I've never underst'd why wine writers cover s'mkt wine. Worst case ppl stop buying in s'market and buy from Indy."

A very valid point. Wine writer and Saturday Kitchen presenter Tim Atkin replied: "Partly because very hard to buy from the bottle by indies unless you live nearby. And 80% of wine sold there."

I chipped in: "Tricky one, but plus-point of s'mkt recs is steering casual buyers to more interesting buys & without patronising them."

I also made the comparison of millionaire celebrity chefs preaching to the public to buy organic chicken. Yes, in an ideal world battery chickens would simply not exist and everyone in the country who eats meat would buy free-range, organic, or at least local. But the principle of someone who is very wealthy and privileged advising those who are neither, about their moral judgments, is on shaky ground. After all it's much easier to take 'ethical' purchasing decisions when you're rich enough to do so. When every penny counts, your child's nutrition will probably come above the welfare of the chicken. And poor people who can't afford one car, never mind two, or one foreign holiday in their whole lifetime, never mind two every year, aren't preaching to celeb chefs about how they could look to reduce their carbon footprints.

Us wine lovers also need to face up to another troublesome issue: just how sustainable is wine full-stop, whichever retailer you buy it from? Just 750ml of liquid (which might have been produced mainly by low-paid workers) in individual bottles that have been shipped across the world must have a sizeable carbon footprint. But that's another issue.

I totally agree with Daniel Primack's fundamental point that no-one has to buy any wine (or meat) in the supermarket – as he says, there are plenty of decent £7 wines in the independents and, actually, you might probably get more for your money that way. I believe in supporting local, independent businesses where you can. The local businessperson has a passion for what they're selling, they live where they do business, and as a result they care about quality rather than just making money. The independents will also pay their fair share of business taxes, unlike the corporations, and will be focal points of local communities. What we do when those same independents become successful multinationals because we've all supported them, again, is another interesting issue…

But going back to supermarkets, the two top concerns for most people are price and convenience when they buy food and drink. Not everyone treats wine any differently from all the other brands available in the supermarket – it's only the wine buffs who spend many of their waking moments thinking about the stuff, who would enjoy browsing online or in a local independent (if they're lucky enough to have one) to get the more interesting and unusual bottles. For everyone else, if they can lob a couple of recognisable and consistent £5 bottles into their trolleys during their weekly shop, why would they go to the extra cost and inconvenience to shop at an independent? Because if they did, it would mean either a) going several miles out of their way just to get their couple of bottles of wine for the week, or b) spending extra time online to buy their wine (with the two bottles costing say £7 each at the independent, so £14, plus a say £7 delivery charge, so £21 for two decent bottles).

I'm playing devil's advocate. I don't earn much money, yet I'm still able to take the extra effort to buy ethical meat and more interesting wines where I can (but by no means every time, admittedly), from independent retailers. But that doesn't mean I think everyone else could do. In an ideal world, yes, and I agree with the basic point that the wine trade should do what it can to encourage independents over supermarkets. And not just the wine trade.

But in the current climate more than ever, us wine geeks need to remember that although it's just simple alcoholic grape juice inside the bottle, we all look at the stuff very differently.