Buying supermarket wine during the pandemic

Six tips to make sure you get your money’s worth at the supermarket Great Wall of Wine

Supermarket wine was one of the big winners during the pandemic, with more of us buying it from the supermarket Great Wall of Wine than ever before. As a high-ranking official at a top Italian producer told me: “Multiple shopping stops are not happening, so instead of going to the grocery store, then to the fine wine shop, butcher, cheese monger, and so forth, people are getting everything in grocery stores.”

And one leading wine trade magazine expects that to continue, with double-digit sales growth perhaps being part of the new normal.

Which leads to a particularly Wine Curmudgeonly dilemma: How does one buy cheap wine that offers both value and quality in the supermarket – and especially when so much supermarket wine seems to be more or less the same? As noted here many times, the biggest half dozen or so U.S. producers make most of the wine supermarkets sell.

So how do you avoid the stuff that looks and tastes the same as the other stuff? Consider these six tips:

• Check the website. It may not say the actual company’s name on the label, and most don’t. But the company’s website always does. No, I don’t know why this is, and neither did the researcher of a seminal Big Wine study.

• Alcohol percentage. This isn’t a hard and fast rule, but it’s true often enough to keep in mind. Many Big Wine products say 13.5 percent even if the alcohol isn’t 13.5 percent. The law allows this, and it’s easier for tax, regulatory, and production reasons to do it. Wines from smaller producers tend to be more precise.

• Look for something other than the usual grapes, so petite sirah instead of cabernet sauvignon and viognier instead of chardonnay.

• Imported roses. Yes, the tariff has hurt pricing, but they’re still mostly what they’re supposed to be. Some domestic roses, on the other hand, are creeping up the sweetness ladder – and no, I don’t know why that is, either.

• New Zealand sauvignon blanc. Some of the least expensive wines aren’t especially well made, but those in the $10 to $15 range are well-made, varietally correct,  and offer value.