Where Tesco is now

Jancis Robinson

Saturday 28 May 2022 • 5 min read

A UK supermarket that seems to be pulling up its socks – though not every wine is a bargain. A version of this article is published by the Financial Times. See 41 tasting notes on wines from Tesco's current range.

One of the many pleasures of being the Financial Times wine correspondent, and writing for this website with its global reach, is that detailed knowledge of every UK supermarket’s wine range is not essential.

There was a time, towards the end of the last century, when the wine departments of Sainsbury’s, Tesco et al strained every sinew to have the best range, and to use wine as a lure to get customers into the store. But this century, with the exception of Waitrose and Marks & Spencer, whose wine buyers seem to have tried harder than others, much of the wine on offer on British supermarket shelves has been relatively lacklustre, dominated by the need to shave pennies off the selling price – not helped by successive, stealthy increases in duty.

The arrival of discounters Aldi and Lidl in the UK has provided much-needed stimulation in the form of special parcels of attractively priced wines, but it is not always easy to find them.

I tend to see many wines before they are in commercial circulation (which has its inconveniences) and have found recently that several of the real bargains to have come my way were on their way to a Tesco shelf. I’d also heard from my fellow Master of Wine Andy Howard, once a wine buyer for M&S and now a dispassionate reviewer of UK supermarket ranges for my website, that Tesco’s wine range was looking up.

So at the end of last month I went to Tesco’s most recent wine tasting for the media to see for myself – and was rather impressed. (I heard less-than-enthusiastic reports of the equivalent tasting organised by arch-rivals Sainsbury’s.)

Such is Tesco’s dominance in the UK that the company sells one in every four bottles of wine retailed here, Sainsbury’s one in six. In a way the thing these large supermarkets are best at is sourcing their cheaper wines that are bought in such large volumes that they can persuade their suppliers to pare margins down to a minimum. Once you go higher up their ranges, prices are rarely dramatically lower than some independent retailers can offer and can be higher (see below). There is the convenience factor of shopping at a supermarket if you have a car, but however much effort some retailers put into training their wine staff, there is rarely anything like the personal service and advice that a small wine-specialist retailer can offer, whether in a shop or on the phone.

Perhaps with prescience about the cost of living crisis, seven of the 68 new wines Tesco included in the total of 143 on show at the tasting were priced at under £4 a bottle, a price that leaves laughably little for the liquid itself and makes one fear for the financial health of the suppliers. Four of these wines were branded Lateral and came from the same Chilean supplier, Ranco Wines.

The Sauvignon Blanc 2021 at £3.89, containing the legal maximum of another grape variety, 15% of the much cheaper Pedro Jiménez, is probably the best value but my tasting note is not exactly enthusiastic: ‘Faint whiff of Sauvignon Blanc on the nose. Good, clean fruit though it does taste as though it contains a bit of water. It’s not exactly intense! But you can see some Sauvignon character in there if you’re determined… Finish is a bit industrial.’ The Cabernet Sauvignon at the same price, plumped up by 4.5 g/l of residual sugar and contact with some oak staves, reminded me of a confection from my childhood called Rhubarb Rock.

But with our global readership in mind, I should probably concentrate my comments on wines that are not specific to Tesco. Wines with international distribution that I marked GV for good value included two from Boekenhoutskloof’s Porcupine Ridge range, a Cinsault from the innovative Ken Forrester and a solid Cabernet Sauvignon from Journey’s End. South African wine is generally underpriced and Tesco seem to have wrangled some good prices out of these suppliers.

Another wine that struck me as great value in its context, even though it costs much more – £15 – is Estancia Chardonnay 2018 Monterey, due to arrive on Tesco shelves early next month. I really appreciated Tesco’s background information on each wine, including the residual sugar. It was high in this wine – 6.1 g/l – but such are the winds of Monterey that grapes have to struggle to ripen here and are habitually high in counterbalancing acidity. This wine combines lime flavour with a certain zesty smokiness and is very different from the popcorn style to be found in many California Chardonnays. It’s quite easy to find this easily overlooked bargain in the US at less than $10, however. (Estancia was one of many brands sold by Constellation to the even bigger Gallo in 2019, so much may have changed since this wine was made.)

Another £15 wine I marked GV was te Pã, Signature Series Pinot Noir 2020 from a family-owned company in Marlborough in New Zealand. My tasting note: ‘Sufficient freshness and follow-through with real purity of fruit. Quite an eye-opener. Some chewiness on the end. No burgundian funkiness nor an indication of terroir but a really nicely constituted modern Pinot. Not too sweet, even if not a long-distance runner.’

Cap Royal 2019 Bordeaux Supérieur is another cleverly sourced wine, a precociously approachable £10 red bordeaux made by, we are told, Jean-René Matignon, the technical director of the overperforming second growth Pauillac Ch Pichon Baron. Obviously the Merlot-dominant raw material will have had nothing to do with Pauillac but this is easy to find in the US (from $11.99), France, Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden, Norway and Japan. It won’t improve, and is pretty simple, but it provides yet more evidence of the value to be found in inexpensive bordeaux.

I gave my highest mark to a wine that should be just as easy to find: Contino Reserva 2017 Rioja – a seriously beautiful wine from CVNE’s estate in Rioja Alavesa, where the wines are made by the celebrated winemaker Jorge Navascués. But while Tesco charge £25 a bottle, this perfectly judged wine is available, according to the price-comparison site Wine-Searcher.com, from no fewer than three independent British retailers for less than £20 a bottle – although prices in the US start at $43.98 before tax – demonstrating just how variable prices can be.

I was able to taste only 41 of the 143 but on the basis of them, all in all I’d say the Tesco wine shelves are once more worth inspecting.