One of the questions we get asked a lot in The Hub is how much to spend on a decent bottle of wine? There isn’t an exact answer to this, but it’s important to understand the costs that go into producing an average bottle of wine to help you to work out where your money is going when you pick up a bottle. 
The average cost of a bottle of wine in the UK is around £4.50 with 56% of this going on tax. In the UK around two thirds of wine drunk is purchased from supermarkets, and they use their purchasing power to buy in bulk, sell at cost or often below cost if they can recoup money on higher priced items.
So how much should you spend? Well if you buy a £5 bottle of wine, by the time you’ve taken off taxes (VAT & Duty which accounts for a whopping 53% of the purchase price), bottling costs, packaging costs, shipping costs, retail & wholesale profit you are left with about 30p to make the wine. This means that the winery will go for quantity as opposed to quality using mountains of cheap grapes and masking unwanted flavours with added sulphites.
If you trade up to a £8 bottle of wine the amount of money given back to the wine producer soars to around £3. With ten times as much going back to the winemaker they can invest in higher quality grapes and experiment with different flavours, such as aging in oak casks or maturing the wine for longer before bottling. The end result of this extra investment being a much better bottle of wine.
Wine experts generally agree that the best value wines are priced broadly between £6 and £9, as that way a decent amount of cash actually goes into the wine. The trouble is how you know if a “£10” bottle of wine in a supermarket isn’t being set up for a 50% off deal, meaning it should be around £5 anyway? The only way to avoid being “done” is to stick to small independents, such as ourselves, who aren’t in the business of sacrificing the quality of wine we sell to make a quick buck!
So in answer to the question, how much to spend on a bottle of wine? The real answer is as much as you can afford. Given all the fixed costs involved in producing a bottle of wine, you don’t have to go much over the average priced bottle to notice a real difference in your glass.
The average cost of a bottle of wine in the UK is around £4.50 with 56% of this going on tax. In the UK around two thirds of wine drunk is purchased from supermarkets, and they use their purchasing power to buy in bulk, sell at cost or often below cost if they can recoup money on higher priced items.
So how much should you spend? Well if you buy a £5 bottle of wine, by the time you’ve taken off taxes (VAT & Duty which accounts for a whopping 53% of the purchase price), bottling costs, packaging costs, shipping costs, retail & wholesale profit you are left with about 30p to make the wine. This means that the winery will go for quantity as opposed to quality using mountains of cheap grapes and masking unwanted flavours with added sulphites.
If you trade up to a £8 bottle of wine the amount of money given back to the wine producer soars to around £3. With ten times as much going back to the winemaker they can invest in higher quality grapes and experiment with different flavours, such as aging in oak casks or maturing the wine for longer before bottling. The end result of this extra investment being a much better bottle of wine.
Wine experts generally agree that the best value wines are priced broadly between £6 and £9, as that way a decent amount of cash actually goes into the wine. The trouble is how you know if a “£10” bottle of wine in a supermarket isn’t being set up for a 50% off deal, meaning it should be around £5 anyway? The only way to avoid being “done” is to stick to small independents, such as ourselves, who aren’t in the business of sacrificing the quality of wine we sell to make a quick buck!
So in answer to the question, how much to spend on a bottle of wine? The real answer is as much as you can afford. Given all the fixed costs involved in producing a bottle of wine, you don’t have to go much over the average priced bottle to notice a real difference in your glass.
