GRAHAM HOLTER Editorial

The reality is that a modest wine habit will cost you about the same as your energy bill

Wine is expensive. I mean, fiendishly expensive. We tell ourselves that it’s not, but it really is. Allow me to horrify my 12-yearold former self with a public demonstration of arithmetic.

The average price of a decent bottle of still wine – by which I mean a bottle that you’d find in a specialist shop rather than a supermarket – is £15.70. That’s what The Wine Merchant survey told us this year, but that was before the duty hike hit.

Let’s pretend this has been the only inflationary pressure to afflict the industry since our January poll. So now we’re adding a nominal 44p, and that price tag has jumped to £16.14. (We’ll ignore VAT for now, if only because it’s so boring.)

We’d like to hope that people who really engage with wine will open a bottle at least three times a week; maybe one on Wednesday night and a couple at the weekend. So that’s a minimum weekly spend of £48.42. Over a year, that comes to £2,517.84, or £209.82 a month.

You’ll note that this fag-packet mathematics assumes that our consumer never treats themselves to a specialoccasion wine, never hosts parties, and never buys a bottle as a gift. Neither are we factoring in the wine they might buy in restaurants – or, if they’re feeling reckless, a pub. But let’s keep the numbers on the conservative side, to avoid any suggestion of hyperbole or exaggeration.

If that figure of £2,517.84 sounds kind of familiar, it might be because a number about that size is regularly quoted in conversations about energy bills. According to documents in the

House of Commons Library, “the average annual gas and electricity bill for a direct debit customer with ‘typical’ levels of consumption is £2,500”. People are struggling to cope with bills of that magnitude. So what makes us confident they can afford to spend the same again on something as non-essential as wine?

Yes, we know that certain sections of society are insulated from the cruelty of the cost-of-living crisis, and that consumers in these categories won’t worry unduly about how they fund their wine habit. But, talking to independents all over the UK, I’m hearing that even some of these lucky people are cutting down or trading down.

Irecently had an instructive chat with a long-established merchant who has seen 15% disappear from his turnover this year, even though footfall is up. It’s been suggested that, instead of placing his premium wines at eye level, he moves them to the bottom shelf and gives the prime slots to a small selection priced £10 and below.

These form part of what he’s calling a cost-of-living range, with wines that can deliver a 30% margin even at prices as low as £7.50. He’s a shrewd buyer, and has been sourcing some surprisingly good quality varietals from Eastern Europe. One Bulgarian Chardonnay, he tells me, “is like Mâcon-Villages … it’s fantastic”.

It sounds like a plan to me, and one that many independents will soon be putting into practice in one form or another, if they haven’t already. But congratulations to any merchant who is able to take this latest duty increase in their stride.

Ginger Cosmo

It’s a design fault of the Cosmopolitan that its inherent pinkness – along with baggage from its days as a staple of Sex & the City – leads to things like “is the Cosmo a girly drink?” cropping up on lists of popular Google searches for it. There is, of course, no such thing as a girly drink, but if that description is intended to imply sickly sweetness, I’d contend that the Cosmo’s balance of sweet, sour and bitterness rules it out of contention. For the avoidance of doubt, however, this spicy twist brings an orangey shift in colour and flavour.

5cl vodka

2.5cl Cointreau

2.5cl lime juice

2cl ginger syrup

Put all the ingredients into a shaker over ice. Shake and strain into a chilled coupe glass. Garnish with an orange peel twist.

Snap Happy

Getting hold of decent bottle shots can be a frustrating task. Even when the photos are OK, there will almost certainly be inconsistencies in the backgrounds, lighting and camera angles between wine suppliers and producers.

When you’re putting together a web page, social media post or newsletter that includes a selection of bottle images, these details make a big difference. It’s no wonder that many indies are now taking a DIY approach to their photography.

Native Vine in Bristol is a good example, creating eyecatching shots of its wines, bringing the colours and textures of its surroundings into the photos taken by Charlie Jones and his team.

“At first it felt like it was going to be a bit of a challenge taking unique photos for everything,” Jones says.

“We had an in-house studio for a bit at first. But you’ve got to measure where your camera is, and make sure that everything is perfect, because if you’re just a couple of centimetres off the results can wind people up.”

The second-hand SLR camera bought for the purpose is now put to more creative use.

“We’ll just grab a few bottles, whatever we’ve got new in stock, and try and have fun with them. Pick out things on the label that maybe speak to things that are in the architecture around us.

“We’re quite lucky in this corner of Bristol – there are lots of interesting buildings, textures, foliage, posters and street art.

“Anyone who’s caught twiddling their thumbs will just get snapped up and told to be a hand model for half an hour.”