13% abv £7.50 Majestic (if bought as part of offer) This is my first ever review of a wine picked up from Majestic. There is no denying the ambition of this chain. More and more Majestic retail stores are popping up on high streets and they've invested a lot in their online store.
Now that you can pick up just six bottles at a time, Majestic are picking up some of the supermarket share & some of the more traditional wine merchant share, with convenience becoming more their selling point.
I'd popped in to buy a couple of wines recommended by fellow wine fans, and I'll review those later, but my local branch didn't have them in stock. No problem. They sourced them from another nearby store and delivered to my door at a specified time the next day.
So what of the offering...
Now that you can pick up just six bottles at a time, Majestic are picking up some of the supermarket share & some of the more traditional wine merchant share, with convenience becoming more their selling point.
I'd popped in to buy a couple of wines recommended by fellow wine fans, and I'll review those later, but my local branch didn't have them in stock. No problem. They sourced them from another nearby store and delivered to my door at a specified time the next day.
So what of the offering...
Watch out for the "fresch" and crispy acidity I picked up a bottle of Fiano, continuing my Italian theme. The Surani Peitriariccia from Salento was £7.50 a bottle if bought with another wine on the same promotion. There were some peachy aromatic notes, a nice mouthfeel body & pleasing acidity. Would it please a Sauvignon Blanc fan? I certainly hoped so, because I managed to convince a chap in store to pick up 2 bottles for his wife when he couldn't decide how to fill his box of 6. This is, however, not Sauvignon Blanc drink alike. It's more subtle, though there are a range of flavours, these were not best expressed immediately on drinking from the fridge.
It's not especially complex, and the flavour, dissipates quite quickly. The flavours are much more discernible if you can have it once it's been out of the fridge for half an hour or so. It's refreshing & Mr Purple Teeth said it was just what the doctor ordered after a long day. It's got a silver medal from both Decanter magazine and the International Wine Challenge, so, if you've never tried a Fiano, this seems like an inexpensive and low risk way to sample the grape variety.
My opinion: it doesn't make sense to buy any full price wines in a Majestic store. This wine was priced at £9.99 and I got it for £7.50 by buying 2 wines within the same offer. Just a week or so later it's now on offer via the Majestic online store for £8.99. The offer of a 25% saving for buying 2 still applies, so at £6.74 it's a more appealing price point to try something new. And, I think a fairer reflection of the price of this wine from the south of Italy. £10 could get me much more wine quality elsewhere.
Like arch-nemesis Naked Wines, Majestic have hit on a way of making us feel like we've got a bargain. Savvy shoppers will certainly never pay the inflated price that's on offer and indeed, in Scotland, wherever a multi-buy price is offered in England and Wales, this will be the single-bottle price. Much as supermarkets such as Tesco have been accused of creating an expectation of half price wine offers by unnaturally inflating the shelf price for limited times and in certain stores (see here) , Majestic are training customers that their "real" prices, aren't really real.
While it's always nice to feel like you're snapping up a bargain, I would much rather that retailers charged a fair price for all the wines all the time, so that any offers are strictly limited to "real" bulk purchase, over-stocks, bin-ends or seasonal promotions.
Nevertheless, I'll review a couple more of my Majestic purchases in the near future and continue keeping an eye out for real wine value for you wherever I spot it. This week I've stocked up on 25% off of some of my favourite wines through Ocado (making The Hedonist Shiraz £10.50 rather than £13.99, the price they now charge as normal, almost the price I started buying it at several years ago).
What are your views on wine pricing? The average price of a bottle sold in the UK is very little over £5 a bottle, of which around £2.75 is tax and duty. If you can afford to pay a little more, you usually get more for your money. But what drives your purchase?
Cheers!
It's not especially complex, and the flavour, dissipates quite quickly. The flavours are much more discernible if you can have it once it's been out of the fridge for half an hour or so. It's refreshing & Mr Purple Teeth said it was just what the doctor ordered after a long day. It's got a silver medal from both Decanter magazine and the International Wine Challenge, so, if you've never tried a Fiano, this seems like an inexpensive and low risk way to sample the grape variety.
My opinion: it doesn't make sense to buy any full price wines in a Majestic store. This wine was priced at £9.99 and I got it for £7.50 by buying 2 wines within the same offer. Just a week or so later it's now on offer via the Majestic online store for £8.99. The offer of a 25% saving for buying 2 still applies, so at £6.74 it's a more appealing price point to try something new. And, I think a fairer reflection of the price of this wine from the south of Italy. £10 could get me much more wine quality elsewhere.
Like arch-nemesis Naked Wines, Majestic have hit on a way of making us feel like we've got a bargain. Savvy shoppers will certainly never pay the inflated price that's on offer and indeed, in Scotland, wherever a multi-buy price is offered in England and Wales, this will be the single-bottle price. Much as supermarkets such as Tesco have been accused of creating an expectation of half price wine offers by unnaturally inflating the shelf price for limited times and in certain stores (see here) , Majestic are training customers that their "real" prices, aren't really real.
While it's always nice to feel like you're snapping up a bargain, I would much rather that retailers charged a fair price for all the wines all the time, so that any offers are strictly limited to "real" bulk purchase, over-stocks, bin-ends or seasonal promotions.
Nevertheless, I'll review a couple more of my Majestic purchases in the near future and continue keeping an eye out for real wine value for you wherever I spot it. This week I've stocked up on 25% off of some of my favourite wines through Ocado (making The Hedonist Shiraz £10.50 rather than £13.99, the price they now charge as normal, almost the price I started buying it at several years ago).
What are your views on wine pricing? The average price of a bottle sold in the UK is very little over £5 a bottle, of which around £2.75 is tax and duty. If you can afford to pay a little more, you usually get more for your money. But what drives your purchase?
Cheers!
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