The UK Advertising Standards Authority recently rapped Britain's biggest wine merchant Direct Wines/Laithwaites over the knuckles for two ads they judged misleading. The company runs the majority of the UK's wine mail-order schemes such as The Sunday Times Wine Club and wine offers from British Airways, the National Trust and several banks in Britain, also owns as sister companies Virgin Wines and Averys, and is now spreading its operations rapidly around the world, running wine offers for the likes of the Wall Street Journal, Die Welt and the South China Morning Post.
The first adjudication concerned a TV...