The supermarket wine monopoly that has parallels in our beer choices...

I’m starting off this piece with a story about wine but, fear not, I’m drawing parallels with beer and coming back to the usual subject. Bear with me if you will.

I like wine. I drink it at home. I’ve recently switched from red wine to white because my annoyingly sensitive stomach handles it better.

The wine on the left arrives in a tanker from New Zealand and is bottled here. The wine on the right, from Chile, is bottled in its country of origin. Bottles were purchased purely in the interests of research!

Since visiting the North Island of New Zealand nine years ago, I’ve taken a particular liking to wine from there, especially that from Hawke’s Bay, a beautiful area we had the pleasure of driving through.

I used to be able to get Hawke’s Bay wines easily in supermarkets and it wasn’t especially pricey either.

However, recently, I can’t find it in regular shops. I gather it’s still around but now through specialist retailers at much higher prices than before. I may be tempted nonetheless.

The thing is, I can only rarely find any wine from the North Island. Almost all wine that comes over here (around 85% of New Zealand’s wine exports, with similar figures in the US and Australia) comes from the Marlborough region of the South Island. Have a look at the bottles on the shelves – if you’re interested – and if the word Marlborough isn’t prominent, it will usually still be there, somewhere on the label.

I’ve looked into why this is so and you may not be surprised. The big wine producers in the Marlborough region are the Heineken, the Molson Coors, the Carlsberg (take your pick) of New Zealand and they’ve established a stranglehold on the British market over other New Zealand producers.

One of the reasons for this is that they don’t send bottles over here. They send tankers. We bottle it here. This is not uncommon with producers from other countries and any bottle of wine will tell you where it’s been bottled – look for the British post code on the label for one bottled here.

Naturally, it makes it more profitable for the wine giant. Look at most bottles of Chilean wine in a supermarket – most of them are bottled in Chile. Yet Chilean wines retail in much the same price range as New Zealand ones here. Go figure…

"Freeman's Bay" New Zealand wine on sale in Aldi this week isn't actually from Freeman's Bay, a suburb of Auckland.

Now, I’m no expert. Only in the last couple of years have I been weaned off the cheapest plonk by my more discerning daughter – a stark contrast to my approach to beer! But I’ll usually look for a wine that’s been bottled in its country of origin, on principle.

In fairness, I’m some of the wine coming over from Marlborough’s vineyards is very good and I’ve cheerfully drunk it myself. It’s the lack of choice, of competition, that I find annoying as a consumer.

I also dislike subterfuge by food and drink producers. I spotted a wine in Aldi this week labelled Freeman’s Bay and my eyes lit up. I know that’s a suburb of Auckland, on the North Island.

However, the wine has nothing to do with the place it’s named after. It’s from Marlborough, like the rest. The origin doesn’t appear on the label for this one and there’s surely only one reason for that. They want you to think it’s from somewhere that it isn’t.

A wine label will usually tell you where the wine was bottled. Many imported wines mention only a British postcode as the bottling source.

In 2023, the renowned wine writer, Jancis Robinson, wrote “the region is now dominated by big companies that are getting bigger and are generally uninterested in exploring much nuance.”

Sounds familiar? You can see how this all brings me back to beer. While the wine sleight of hand is on a smaller scale, such subterfuge is akin to Molson Coors pretending that Madri is from Spain. Or Carlsberg serving their keg “fresh ales” through handpumps in a bid to pass them off as traditional beer.

As consumers, we’re assailed by cons that are legal, but shouldn’t be, from all sides by unscrupulous producers.

I’ve used the story of Marlborough wines as an example. It applies to beer as well. Make no mistake, the big brewers operating in this country would like nothing better than to keep on reducing consumer choice and they’ve already done plenty of that.

Heineken would be happiest if they only had to make Heineken, Molson Coors (in Britain) would be happiest if they only had to make Carling.

OK, I’m exaggerating a bit, for effect. But not by much. They know they can’t quite get away with that, but they will keep trying to edge towards it where possible.

The proposed closure of the former Marston’s brewery in Burton is the most prominent current example.

I just wonder if there will ever again be enough customer outrage and resistance to make a difference to the disdain these large companies show to their customers.

It happened before, when Camra was successful in reversing the tide of keg beer in the 70s.

Times are different, though. And no, I don’t have the answer, just the outrage. * Most of my articles will be about a specific beer, pub or brewery. Rants like these are an occasional thing! Please feel free to comment and, if you haven't already, think about subscribing (see the home page). It's free and it just means you get told when I've written something.