I am regularly sort of tempted by Laithwaites bargain cases. I then go
online and start searching some German, Italian and Spanish websites
and I cannot find any of the wines, and usually not even producers.
Sometimes I can, then the producer does not list the particular wine
at all.

When you go to say Majestic, this is different. Their wines are from
wineries that exist, can be traced and the wines usually exist abroad
as well. Therefore, I can double check before allowing Ripoff-Britain
to get the better of me. You can also double check their Calais price
to find out what proportion of your money goes to Gordon Brown.

The way I usually buy wine in this country is by checking Euro prices;
if I can beat a reputable supplier in Germany for a bottle of Chianti
I buy it. If I cannot, I dream about my next booze cruise and drink up
what I have in my cellar (too bad Dover is 250 miles away from where I
am).

But as I said, Laithwaites cheaper stuff simply does not exist
anywhere outside the UK. My suspicion is that the way they operate is
not by buying bottles of named and known wines, but by buying huge
quantities of noname wines in casks, to then basically commission
their own wines and labels. That makes market transparency impossible
and you can never know whether you get value for money. If they
operate anything like olive oil merchants, they might even sell an
Italian cabernet made from imported Bulgarian grapes. Does anyone know
more about this or am I simply wrong?

Fred

"Fred" skrev i melding
...

But as I said, Laithwaites cheaper stuff simply does not exist
anywhere outside the UK. My suspicion is that the way they operate is
not by buying bottles of named and known wines, but by buying huge
quantities of noname wines in casks, to then basically commission
their own wines and labels.
Of course, perfectly legal and worthwhile as long as they don't fake
labels... You get what you pay for and it might even be good value, like
those Goliath Turkeys in the US, or whatever they are called... :-)
Anders