Too often we hear that wines at the supermarket are poor quality wines, but while this may perhaps have been true in the past, it is now totally outdated by the increasing focus by large-scale retail chains.
Every now and then I feel like writing about this topic because I really hear all kinds of things about it. There are those who argue, even in often heated tones, that producers who make quality wines should not sell them to supermarket chains. There are reasons for this position, but also more general considerations to be made.
The first is that not all large-scale retail trade is uniform. There are chains such as Coop, Esselunga and Eataly, for example, but not only, that devote a lot of attention to quality wines and can boast of the respectable wine departments, with prices comparable to those of specialized wine stores. Then that many of these facilities, because of their spread throughout the territory, also perform a task that I would call social. It is certainly easier to run into a supermarket than a good wine shop in many parts of our country.
Of course, there are also problems. Buyers at many chains are professional buyers and sometimes manage to extract prices that a small merchant would dream of. The mark-ups are normally lower because economies of scale can be made, there are special offers, and so on. Therefore, there is a competition that for small distributors may even appear unfair to them.
However, this does not mean, as I hear, that if a wine appears on a supermarket shelf it is either a red herring or would not be of quality. This is clearly not the case.
I have personally seen great wines offered by even international chains. At Leclerc’s and Carrefour’s in France, at Ralph’s in California, one can find wines of great reputation and consequent prices. It won’t be like going to a specialized wine shop, where you can take advantage of the advice of an often knowledgeable and passionate owner, sure. But the similarity with which one enters Feltrinelli’s instead of a small bookstore seems tenable to me.
Of course, if one is particularly passionate and with a very careful focus on certain, artisanal, “natural” wines that are very representative of specific territories, supermarket shelves probably won’t suffice, but that’s another matter and another sector of the market. The fact remains, however. many fine labels are now also in many supermarkets, and that the equation of wine at the supermarket equals poor quality wine, assuming that it has been partly true in the past, no longer really holds today.
