Debate a Bubble - Champagne News and Reviews

Supermarket Champagne Bargains Are Rubbish- It's Official!

For those of you who don't live in the U.K. let me tell you that Women's Hour is a long running radio programme broadcast daily at around 10.00 a.m.

How come I know this? Well if I'm in the car at that time of day I'll often listen to whatever's on - Hey that's my excuse and I'm sticking to it - and today it turned out to be worth it.

To my suprise there was a feature on champagne and more specifically about the supposed champagne bargains on offer in British supermarkets at the moment.

The expert guest  was a well known wine writer and critic with one of the major newspapers and she was pretty scathing about the quality of the cut-price champagnes on offer in every supermarket at prices around £10 - £12 a bottle

'It's all rubbish; it's grim; I wouldn't clean my toilet  with some of this stuff ' and more in the same vein.

In fact the message of the review was loud and clear. If you only want to spend  £15 or less, you're far better off getting 2 bottles of cave or prosecco than one of the cheap supermarket champagnes.

They are not bargains at all, they're rubbish.  

In fact, according to the 'expert' the cheapest champagne that was worth drinking was priced at £18.99

Am I disturbed by this? Not a bit. I entirely agree. In fact it's what I've been saying for ages.

Apart from the fact that the quality of the cheap stuff is indeed grim and the taste acidic, I just can't see the point of buying cheap champagne.

Champagne is supposed to make you feel special for goodness sake - not like a cheapskate - and how can  spending only £10 on your champagne make you feel affluent and good about yourself?

Having said this, I  don't like to waste my money and I know that you don't  have to spend an absolute fortune on a bottle of champagne.

I'm convinced that the big brand names rarely offer you the best value for money and what I really love is to find some great champagnes from the smaller unknown makers, of which there are dozens.. You'll have to spend  somewhere in the mid £20s and perhaps a little more for some of their cuvées, but wow, are they worth it!

If you'd like to discover some of these 'hidden gems' why not join our new champagne club. Check it out here

http://bit.ly/champagneclub

Stay Bubbly,

Jiles

Looking for cheap champagne?

The latest wheeze in one of the French supermarkets is champagne on sale for only 10.95 euros a bottle.

I haven’t had the chance to pop over yet and taste it – if there is any left at that price – but I have it on good authority that it’s really not bad.

When you consider that 10.95 includes VAT and that the supermarket will be making a margin too, it’s unlikely that the champagne maker will have sold the bottles for more than 8 euros.

Remember too that the price for a kilo of grapes is around 4.5 – 5 euros and that it takes 1.2 kg to make a bottle of champagne, and you’ll realise that the raw material alone cost 5 – 6 euros without taking into account any of the other costs, much less a profit.

All in all that’s not a very attractive situation for the champagne maker, but it does generate cash and it’s very much a sign of the times.

How things change.

This time a year ago prices were bouyant and all the talk was about how to keep up with the ever-growing worldwide demand for champagne. The plan finally approved was to include 40 new villages in the authorised production area, although this is a long-term project and won’t have an impact on the number of bottles produced until about 2020

Since last year you won’t be surprised to learn that sales of champagne have slowed down quite a bit and several champagne makers are resorting to cutting prices in order to generate precious cash.

Only recently there were reports in the French press that the Boizel Chanoine group, which owns Boizel as well as Lanson and De Venoge, amongst other brands, was planning on introducing a champagne at 10 euros a bottle as the entry point to its range of more expensive champagnes.

Whether or not that comes to pass remains to be seen and if the story does develop I’ll let you know.

Don’t hold your breath too much however. It’s unlikely that we’ll see quite the same prices here in the U.K. For a start, the duty on a bottle of champagne is almost £2 a bottle, then there’s the transport to pay for as well – not much, but it all adds to the price.

Still the price trend is definitely downward.

As I’ve said many times before, the big brands will try to keep out of this price war as much as they can, but that means you’ll be able to find some great champagnes and some great prices amongst the smaller growers, so watch this space.

Jiles

PS

The champagne industry is fascinating in many ways, but none is more intriguing that the thorny issue of pricing. I’ll be delving in more detail into this and the fascinating power struggles between the various players involved, in my forthcoming Bubbly Bulletins

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Last but not least, I'd love to hear from you, so do please e-mail me with any questions and comments at

jiles@madaboutbubbly.com