Winebits 409: Grocery store wine edition
by Wine Curmudgeon Posted On
? Colorado wants grocery store wine: Which is not necessarily news. What’s different, though, is the latest campaign to change the state’s liquor laws to allow supermarkets to sell wine and beer. The arguments are much the same as elsewhere, in which liquor stores say they’ll face economic ruin if grocers sell beer and wine, and grocers talk about convenience and giving customers what they want. One difference, though: The pro-supermarket side has enlisted a former country sheriff on its side. That usually doesn’t happen, given that law enforcement is mostly on the anti-supermarket side.
? Tennessee gets closer to grocery store wine: The Volunteer state, which approved supermarket wine sales to start next July, is already seeing grocers get ready for the change. Said a Kroger manager in Knoxville: “We just finished a center store reset where we were preparing to have wine in the stores and as you can see we have added shelving here for wine and we ?ve added shelving here and we are going to have some refrigerated cases for wine as well.” Tennessee regulators expect 270 stores sell wine in 2016.
? Aldi, Lidl gaining market share: Traditional British supermarkets continue to lose ground to discounters Aldi and Lidl, both of which are known for the quality of their cheap wine. Each company’s sales rose 18 percent in the 12 weeks through Oct. 11, while Tesco and the Walmart-owned Asda saw sales drop in the low single digits. Those of us who are leery of rising wine prices should know that both chains succeed by undercutting their larger competition, and that Aldi is about to move into California and Lidl will open its first U.S. stores on the east coast sometime in the next year.
Hi Jeff
Enjoyed your Texas tasting at AWS yesterday, thanks.
Re Aldo coming to CA — I thought they are already there operating under the Trader Joes brand name…
Aldi and Trader Joe’s are owned by different branches of the same family, but aren’t the same company. So two completely different companies that have nothing to do with each other.
And thanks for the kind words — I’m going to write about AWS later in the week.