Own Label Awards Challenge 2008

My old mate Caspar Auchterlonie has been gestating the idea of lining up the high street’s own label wines and pitting them against each other for some years now. Ever since attending an Aldi (of all supermarkets) tasting and being blown away by the extraordinarily good quality of the wine, especially when compared the price: really good Californian Zinfandel for under a fiver anyone?

www.ownlabelwards.com

For 2 days in February I was delighted (I’m not sure that’s entirely correct, but it was very interesting) to taste through the wine offerings from most of the major supermarkets. When you consider that most wine consumed in the UK is now purchased form the super market, anywhere between 75% and 95% of total sales depending on who you believe, and that 40% of those are own label or exclusively imported wines, you begin to realise just how important this sector is: anywhere between 30% and 38% of total UK wine consumption!

The results make interesting reading, and you can rest assured it wasn’t just me making the decisions as to whether the wine was any good or not as the tasting panel was littered with such luminaries as Matthew Jukes, Charles Metcalfe, Anthony Rose, Peter McCombie MW, Nicholas Faith, John Downes MW and Amelia Pinsent.