LIFE LESSONS FOR RICHARD - PART ONE, BUYING WINE

It's time for a new series I think.

I spent the weekend with Richard. You know Richard, he's the author of the second most popular blog in this blogging community.

When discussing life, the universe and old Loony Tunes cartoons it came to me that Richard needs a bit of help with many things to set him straight.
One thing that he does wrong is in buying wine. He hinted that he might sign up to one of those 'wine clubs' where they send a 'carefully selected' dozen wines to customers on a regular basis. You should avoid these as while they aren't exactly scams, the 'carefully selected' promise is a lot of crap. I used to work for a wine company that was one of the suppliers to this. the 'careful selection' was more in selecting suppliers than in selecting wine. The wine clubs want suppliers who can work with them to put forward or create exclusive labels that won't be seen discounted in supermarkets. These labels bear the names of creeks, rivers, bays, mountains, animals etc that look enticing. The wine selection is based on the cheapest possible inputs that can stand up to some scrutiny and be to a 4 star average standard. Not bad wine just indifferent wine. The suppliers simply bottle from some larger volume stock that they want to get rid of. Occasionally the wine clubs get hold of some 'failed export order' stocks or wineries overstocks that can be good buys but are mixed in as part of the 'mixed dozen' parcel. Pricing is made to seem as great value because a theoretical retail price is worked out with the supplier and a big discount taken off the dozen price to appear as a good deal.

*Avoid*

THE WINE GUY wrote something about this some time ago but I guess Richard didn't read it.

BUYING MY WINE

The best deals are from COUNTDOWN when it has a 20% off sale. The trick is to buy wines that are already on promotion with a decent discount off (look along the shelves and spot the price-off stickers). when  buying 6 or more mixed of any wines there is an additional 20% discount taken off at the check-out. I wait for these sales and buy up 2 or 3 dozen mixed wines for the cellar ending up with expensive and top quality wines for the price of the cheaper and ordinary stuff.