Where is best to buy your wine from?
By: Wined Your Neck In
Tags: Wine, Red Wine, Shop Local, Wine Industry

With so many options at our disposal in this modern day and age, establishing where is best to buy wine from can be a minefield. Of course you can buy wine through the interweb portal, but when so much more of everyday life has migrated that way, I think it’s nice to hark back to times when you can pop into a store and have a conversation with the person serving you.

And that’s especially the case now that more shops have recently re-opened (at the time of writing we were emerging from lockdown April 2021), notably your independent local keepers of shop of wine — ones that may not have had licence to operate until the past couple of weeks. But does that mean you should buy from them just because you now can? Or does your trusty local newsagent or [insert generic supermarket brand name] still warrant the best value for money, for your taste? Well we’re about to find out.

Local newsagent

I can almost guarantee they will only stock big brand wine. Some of these are fine. And for a quick fix they can do the job. But the nature in which these big brands operate, how they carry out their business (i.e. mass-produced, at the expense of care for the product, in order to maximise profit), isn’t a model that aligns all that well (/at all) with the natural essence of what wine really is and should be.

Supermarket sweep

These can be pretty well equipped. Especially the bigger boys. The astute readers amongst you will notice a lot of my supermarket wine recommendations throughout writing this blog are Sainsbury’s and Waitrose influenced — simply because I believe they have the best range from a supermarket perspective — in terms of breadth of grape varieties and wine styles on offer, as well as value for money.

Their own labelled ranges are also decent enough, as A) they are unlikely to put their name against a garbage product, and B) the supermarket has a brand presence already, so more of their ‘wine budget’ therefore actually goes into producing the wine itself, rather than into marketing a wine brand.

Big wine specialist (Majestic and the like)

A good option for those looking to start branching out. They will often stock bottles you may not have come across, will likely have a huge range (which can be daunting, but often have handy experts within a legally permitted socially distanced earshot to assist) and at prices not too far off your supermarket savers.

I tend to find this lack of curation though means there can be a lot of mediocrity, owing to stock being tied into other lines that they need to shift, or being proffered up as a way of cushioning their margins (bidness talk).

And to boot, from experience they usually require a car to access due to their warehouse-style setup — therefore rarely a viable option for many reading this article (i.e. 20 to 30 somethings living in city confines).

Local specialist wine shops

Unsurprising that the wine loving wine blog writer leaves their obvious top choice of local specialist wine shops until last to gush over. But as has been the dominant sentiment experienced by many over the past year, supporting local business, and those who are honed in their knowledge and craft, who really care about what they do, and who they serve, are the people and businesses we should really be supporting.

Akin to buying a piece of clothing, if you purchase something cheap and shoddy, which evidently has little care and consideration put in, with corners cut at every stage, then inherently what you’re left with is significantly less appealing than buying from your favourite clothes brand (unless your favourite clothes brand is cheap and shoddy — in which case, fair play).

The only hurdle to overcome in this sense, for spending slightly more on wine, is the fact that a bottle of wine’s lifespan is the same, regardless of the bottle, i.e. it’s going in a night, whereas clothing will likely last longer the more you spend on it. But as soon as we overcome that, it is easier to understand that it is the memory created by better wine that gives us that desired longevity. And local specialist wine shops are the masters of offering us this bliss.

So here’s a list of my favourite London wine shops that I implore you to check out (in real life persons):

Feel free to comment below as well with any of your top local wine shops — I’m south-based so naturally have a geographical sway to wine shops that way, but would love to hear about any standouts across this cité, or anywhere in the UK really.

Original post can be found here.