Supermarket Clearouts

[Alex Bridgeman]

It occured to me as I was driving home last night, idly thinking about the days of £5 Warre Traditional LBV from Asda and of £10 half bottles of Dow 1983 from Sainsbury, that the small number of people represented on this board might offer an attractive option for the UK supermarkets who want to quickly get rid of their remaindered, slow moving port stocks.

Just out of curiosity, post a reply here to say roughly how many bottles of port (of all types) you purchased in the 12 months July 2006-June 2007. I suspect that collectively, we purchased a quantity that would make us significant for wine merchants and supermarkets to consider.

It might even be a way of getting cheap port for our Canadian cousins, at least cheap enough to entice them into a C$300 return air fare to come and collect a couple of cases of cheap port. Heck, you could probably save C$300 on a single bottle the prices that are charged in Canada!

Once I've found out how much we collectively bought, I might then do a spot of research and write to a few of the wine buyers for the supermarkets and see if there is any interest in their giving us advance warning of port stock clearances or simply offering us the last couple of slow moving cases of Guimaraens 1987.

You never know...

Late edit:- I've just counted that I purchased 183 bottles last year

Alex

[uncle tom]

Far too many! - over 700 bottles including the Morgans - but this is not typical...

The sort of bargains you might pick up from the supermarkets are more likely to be damaged stock - a case gets dropped in the warehouse, one bottle breaks, and all the labels get drenched...

I've no doubt that the small wine merchants 'drink through' their accidents, but it may be that the likes of Sainsbury occasionally sell off pallets of damaged stock.

Be interesting to know what they say.

Tom

[Conky]

Alex,

An interesting thought. It must be worthy of exploration. I suspect you will have to define the Port, at least into two categories.

If your talking ordinary Ports being sold half price or better for say under £10, I would commit to 4/5 cases. When I say commit, I mean I will buy it because its such a bargain, that personal preference goes out the window. Therefore I dont need notification, or consultation, it just needs to be an overwhelming price reduction(eg. More than 50% off, and commonly sold elsewhere at 100%).
The next category, the fine Ports, usually VP, I would commit to a case, but I would like notification, and the price may be restrictive/important as to the final nquantity. Hypothetically, you may stumble across a clearance on 2003 Fonseca. As much as its a bargain, (And ignore the obvious resale value) I dont want cases of Port that would take another 20years+ before I can enjoy it. And of course even half price on Premier VP's may be quite an expense.

Hope that helps you gauge my viewpoint.

Alan

[Alex Bridgeman]

Alan,

But the Fonseca 2003 is drinking beautifully at the moment...

More seriously, I wasn't so much trying to gauge what people would be willing to buy as to what to put at the top of a letter, something along the lines of "I am a member of a port buying cooperative. Over the past 12 months we bought more than 100 cases of port. Got your attention? Good. Now here's the deal..."

So let me know roughly how many bottles you bought in the last 12 months and we can see if we can get close to something spectacular and attention grabbing, like 100 cases. We are already over 73 cases

I suspect that if we were ever offered any remaindered or damaged stock the problem would be less about getting enough people together to buy it all as making sure that we share it out fairly. We probably bought 5-6 cases of the Warre 1995 LBV between us and probably bought most of what was offered by Asda.

Alex

[Conky]

In that case, I would say half a dozen cases. About 1-2 of Good stuff, and 3-4 of the ordinary.
But I'm on the uphill curve, to the point that the Gorgeous Deborah has introduced it into her Nagging Routines, along with Laziness, unromantic, golf, football, (Think I better stop there!)

Alan

[KillerB]

Of Port it is probably only about three to four cases. All wines would be triple that or more.

[DRT]

Without getting into the scary world of working out the number of bottles that have gone on and off the cellar list in the past 12 months, I think I have bought around 10-12 cases, the vast majority being at the low end of the price spectrum at under £10 per bottle. I have also used up my entire allocation of port-buying Brownie points for 2007

I have to disagree with Tom on this. I don't think UK supermarket chains pass on damaged stock. I think they sell discount wines for 3 reasons:

1. They buy big and cheap and sell at a price which still makes them a profit even though it looks like a big saving to the consumer. These are typically wines and ports at the lower end of the market that otherwise would not sell in high volumes if placed on the shelf at the "RRP"

2. Pricing mistakes. Rarely, but not uncommonly, individual stores get mixed-up when setting prices. I have been fortunate enough to pick-up a few of these in my time and on each occassion you normally only get away with one purchase. An example was when I went to our local Sainsbury about 6 months ago to find Graham's Reserve (a respectible premium ruby) with a 50% off tag in front of it on the shelf. I took 6 bottles to the checkout and was presented with a bill for the full amount. I protested for 3 seconds and they sold me the bottles at half price. Not to be repeated as this was just an error in this one store.

3. Target market error. Warre's LBV 95 is a classic example of this. Asda recently sold off god knows how many bottles of this at 33% of RRP. Insane. The reason for this, I believe, is that Asda made an error of judgement when adding this to their stock-list. Without wishing to be unkind to Asda's customer-base, 99.99999% of them would not know a Ruby from a Vintage. The other 0.00001% are KillerB and I.

For a long time Asda have had Dow's Crusted at around £13 per bottle. Always in a single row on the shelf, never a big seller. Either side they have had standard LBV's and SQVP's at <£10 and >£18 respectively. Someone at Asda (or Wal*Mart) was duped into believing that the Asda customer would appreciate the subtle difference between a standard LBV at £10 or less and a Traditional LBV that lay somewhere between the exotic sounding "Crusted" and the unobtainable "Vintage". Big mistake. I would bet that sales of Warre's LBV 95 at Asda in the past 12 months would be next to zero. All they wanted to do was offload the stock that was never-ever-ever going to sell.

Just my theory.

Derek

[jdaw1]

I would say half a dozen cases

Score me for the same. I’d be on for vintage port, ≥reasonable house, ≥reasonable year. But not LBVs until I live again in the UK.

I suspect that if we were ever offered any remaindered or damaged stock the problem would be less about getting enough people together to buy it all as making sure that we share it out fairly.

I hereby define fairly to be “however AHB, in his judgement, whether or not reasonable, shall determine†.