The Lemon Fool

Buying a cheap French wine is pretty high-risk, and I don't buy expensive wine for home consumption. So last night's tipple came as a pleasant surprise: a very nice Cotes du Rhone. Full-bodied, but not over-strong. Smooth, easy taste.

Not remembering how much I'd paid for it, I thought I'd look it up. Sainsburys no longer have it, but ...
First result, from wine-searcher.com, finds it at an evidently-posh London shop for £39.77 per bottle (just missing free shipping on orders over £39.99).
But also on the first page of google results, ASDA sell it at £6.00 for the same bottle. Aha, that sounds much more like a price I'd've paid ...

UncleEbenezer wrote:Buying a cheap French wine is pretty high-risk, and I don't buy expensive wine for home consumption. So last night's tipple came as a pleasant surprise: a very nice Cotes du Rhone. Full-bodied, but not over-strong. Smooth, easy taste.

Not remembering how much I'd paid for it, I thought I'd look it up. Sainsburys no longer have it, but ...
First result, from wine-searcher.com, finds it at an evidently-posh London shop for £39.77 per bottle (just missing free shipping on orders over £39.99).
But also on the first page of google results, ASDA sell it at £6.00 for the same bottle. Aha, that sounds much more like a price I'd've paid ...

I wonder how many Lemons, confronted with a blind tasting, could tell which wine was which if one cost twice what the other did (from the same source). I find that happens in France not a little. Not that you can rely on such an inverse relationship, but it seems to happen more often than randomness would suggest.

Things are distorted more by the high tax on wine in the UK. You can still buy a bottle of wine for $2 in the US ("two buck chuck"). That is quite simply not possible in the UK because of the taxes.

If this wine is La Chasse Du PapetThe expensive one is a 1999 Vintage. The Asda one is probably a much more recent vintage.

If you enjoyed it the £6 option is great but to an expert the earlier vintage is possibly also worth the money.

Personally £6 is fine with me , I'm not an expert.