British wine lovers are so lucky. We may pay through the nose for our pleasures via the increasingly complicated taxation of our favourite liquid, and wine prices are likely to rise even further towards October when the government will start collecting EPR payments from retailers. (EPR no longer stands for my FT predecessor Edmund Penning-Rowsell but for extended producer responsibility, another complex scheme, in this case designed to reduce the environmental impact of packaging.)
But we do have a national treasure in the form of The Wine Society, a long-standing, exceptionally good wine retailer that is owned by its members rather than by rapacious shareholders. As it happens, the original E P-R was chairman of the Society for decades, and was scrupulous about never mentioning it in his FT columns.
‘Passion before profit’ has been one of the Society’s slogans, which has recently been all too true. As current CEO Steve Finlan told me through gritted teeth at their spring tasting for wine media last month, ‘We really have been a mutual recently, and made hardly any profit at all’. This was a result of the Society’s much-vaunted pledge to hold ‘the vast majority’ of their prices, despite a perfect storm of pressures on them, from May 2023 to February 2025. According to Finlan, the Society is now starting to increase its prices, by an average of 2.5–3%, which will presumably help fund the raft of eco measures that are already underway, and well publicised to members.
These include not just reducing carbon emissions right through the supply chain, with a special emphasis on solar energy and packaging, reducing bottle weight and dispensing with capsules on their own-label bottles, apparently saving the equivalent of the weight of a giraffe in plastic and aluminium in the first year. They are proactively encouraging their hundreds of suppliers around the world to become more environmentally and socially responsible themselves by hosting free webinars to help them, and by investing £60,000 a year in specially vetted producer schemes. The third pillar of sustainability of course is financial; this must lead to some interesting discussions between supplier and the supplied. (To be fair, the Society’s most obvious competitor Laithwaites is also pretty hot on sustainability, as Julia outlined here.)
All this should make members feel virtuous about buying from this particular merchant, but what about the quality and range of the wines on offer? I have spent nearly 50 years trying to remain as neutral as possible in my dealings with both producers and retailers, so it rather goes against the grain to express my extreme enthusiasm for what the Society has to offer wine lovers. The prices have always been keen across the board, usefully translating into genuine value rather than cost-cutting. At their tastings, I find myself liberally sprinkling GV for good value and VGV for very good value in my notes. At the most recent one, I tasted a total of 81 wines and found 17 of them GV, another 16 VGV and one, The Society’s Exhibition Chenin Blanc 2022, made by South African winemaking heroes Chris and Suzaan Alheit, VVGV at £14.50. (The Alheit family are pictured above.)
The Society has a wide range of its own hand-picked bottlings (whose prices are still being held), with the top of the range labelled Exhibition as a nod to the Society’s genesis in 1874 when a group of professional men formed a wine-buying society to use up an embarrassing surplus of Portuguese wine that had been overlooked after being shipped to the London International Exhibition in the Albert Hall. The gentlemen’s stated objective then was ‘to introduce foreign wines hitherto unknown', a practice the Society continues to this day.
They’ve just increased their team of enthusiastic professional wine buyers to nine, with a much lower average age than used to be the case. Their job is to continuously refresh the range of wines, currently totalling 1,650, from The Society’s Portuguese Red at £6.50 to a Chave, Cuvée Cathelin 1995 Hermitage recently sold for £6,500 a bottle (£7,800 currently on Wine-Searcher.com) – although the most expensive bottle on the list today is £380. They tend to be fleeter of foot than their supermarket counterparts and can get wines on the list much faster. According to Finlan, they have recently been able to acquire several interesting parcels of wine from overstocked UK importers.
Because the Society has such a long history, it has established solid relationships with the producers of many of the world’s most sought-after wines, whose allocations to members can be a headache nowadays of course, risking complaints on the Society’s online forum. But what distinguishes the Society’s range is its quirkiness. At the recent tasting, I marked several wines such as the pair from Syria, a Ukrainian Chardonnay, a Czech red, a New Zealand Albariño and an obscure Puglia varietal as typical of Society buyers’ enthusiasms.
A fifth warehouse has recently been added to their site in Stevenage, north of London, where members can store their wines, typically those bought in bond en primeur from the Society, for £10.80 per case per year including VAT, insurance and replacement at current value should anything go wrong. But also in store is £18 million worth (at cost) of maturing fine wines that will be offered to members when they are judged ready to drink, a rare asset. Below the Stevenage offices, a short walk from the rail station, is a shop with some bottles available in too small a quantity to make it on to their (still printed) lists.
The total number of active members is currently 182,000. Finlan claims that their price-holding exercise brought in some of the younger members they are so keen to court (average age of members has been 60). An initiative last year aimed at publicising the Society’s existence to a more youthful crowd involved offering some of their mature treasures to Noble Rot restaurants. This did not go down well with some of the members. A wider selection of orange and natural wines might help?
Membership involves buying a lifetime share for £40, with a £20 discount redeemable on the first order. Delivery is free, a welcome change from many merchants. Their Director of Sustainability and Social Impact Dom de Ville has trialled electric vehicles for their delivery fleet and reluctantly abandoned the idea because the Society’s drivers wouldn’t be able to make nearly enough deliveries. ‘We then looked at using HVO [hydrotreated vegetable oil] fuel’, he reported, ‘but on close investigation I decided against it. Because of the explosion in demand for HVO, suppliers are now having to source from outside the EU and couldn’t guarantee that the feedstock didn’t include virgin palm oil, hence contributing to deforestation. A minefield.’
Perhaps in a nod to the current economic mood, the average price of the wines on show last month seemed lower than usual, with the most expensive wine being the Syrian red, Bargylus Grand Vin Rouge 2016 at £35 a bottle. But even that, with its layer upon layer of exotic fruit and interest, I thought excellent value: GV.
Favourites
All VGVs from The Wine Society.
Sparkling
Antech, M Le Mauzac Réserve Extra Brut 2022 Blanquette de Limoux (12%) £12.25
Whites
Kintonis, G & L Malagousia 2024 Peloponnese (12.5%) £9.50
Cantina di Monteforte, Coste 2024 Soave Classico (13%) £9.50 from 6 May
El Escosés Volante, Sobre Lías Albilla 2024 Manchuela (12%) £10.50
Château d'Emeringes, Vieilles Vignes 2023 Beaujolais-Villages (13.7%) £9.95
Bolgrad, Select Collection Chardonnay 2023 Odesa (12.5%) £11.50
Domaine Huchet, Chemin des Prières 2023 Muscadet (12%) £12.50 from 6 May
Alheit, The Society's Exhibition Chenin Blanc 2022 Western Cape (13%) £14.50
Château de Chantegrive, Caroline 2016 Graves (13%) £14.95
Reds
Château Virevalois 2022 Bordeaux (14%) £7.95
Vallone Susumaniello 2022 Salento (13.5%) £9.50
Alma de Tinto Mencía 2023 Monterrei (13%) £10.50
Casa Agrícola, Pepe Mendoza Monastrell/Giró/Alicante Bouschet 2022 Alicante (14%) £13.50
Mouchão, Rafael 2021 Alentejo (14%) £14.95
López de Haro Gran Reserva 2014 Rioja (14%) £19
For all the tasting notes, scores and suggested drinking dates from this tasting, see The Wine Society's finds – spring 2025.
Back to basics
| Where to buy wine in the UK |
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If a friend asks me where to buy wine for a large gathering, I usually suggest Majestic because they provide glasses, ice buckets and chiller bins as well as sale or return (see here). This group of shops and wine warehouses all over the country offers free local delivery for orders above £99, and pricing is based on encouraging customers to buy at least six bottles (which may be mixed). There’s usually a bargain-basement champagne, although of their current offerings, I’d definitely be tempted to trade up from the Nicolas Courtin at £26 a bottle to Drappier Premier Cru at £39. When a friend of our daughter asked the other day for recommendations of seriously inexpensive wine for her wedding after-party, however, I sent her to Tesco. At the moment the Tesco buying team seem to put the most work into sourcing wine at the bottom end of the price spectrum, and is so big that – so far – they seem to be able to keep prices extremely keen. Andy Howard MW attended Tesco's recent press tasting and suggested she try these: White Italy – Vista Castelli 2024 Trebbiano d'Abruzzo £5 Rosé Italy – Tesco Finest Pinot Grigio Blush 2024 Dolomites £8.25 Red Spain – Marqués de los Zancos 2024 Rioja £6.25 But of course I’d much rather support small, independent wine merchants and wouldn’t hesitate to encourage anyone with more than a passing interest in wine to develop a relationship with their local specialist. It should prove mutually beneficial. As for the best wine retailer overall, I always recommend The Wine Society (which loans glasses from their Stevenage shop), for all the reasons spelled out above. |
