Wine Industry No-Nos

Practices That Aren’t Fair to Consumers and Producers

Wine Pricing

Here’s a common pricing example that you might see at a supermarket or wine merchant: a wine is shown on the shelf for £14.99. A week later the price is offered at a 25% discount for £11.25, and you might even get an extra 5% off if you buy 6 bottles. Consumers think they’re getting a great deal and stock up.

What’s actually happening here though is that wine that should retail at £10 is inflated to £14.99. These ‘deals’ are rotated with discounts that bring the cost down on occasion so that it looks like a bargain.

We actually saw a recent example of this on Vivino – they were offering some old stock of one our wines for 20% off at £18.99. But on Wanderlust, it sells for £18.33 full price. This is a good illustration of mark-up-discount-down which masks the actual real value of the wine.

We don’t play pricing games and we don’t pretend that we’re giving you discounts when they’re not real in the first place. That is a core part of our ethos – transparency and keeping it fair and simple.

Wine Supply Contracts

Sometimes, the contracts that large retailers ask producers to sign can be really hurtful. The discounts that you see on the shelves can sometimes be charged back to the suppliers to that they take a loss on some promotions.

On top of this if you were to complain about your wine to the supermarket – for example, if it was corked, or didn’t live up to expectations – these returns can be passed on along with penalties, often £50 per complaint.

At Wanderlust, we’re able to have an honest conversation with our producers and they simply replace the wine if it’s faulty. If you don’t like a wine that you’ve bought, we try our best to appease you and replace it with something you’ll love!