Don't fall for Waitrose's mega wine sale – go to the pub instead

Telegraph

25-05-2025

It's a temptation more alluring than that of Saint Anthony, more bewitching than the sirens of the Odyssey. Waitrose is offering 25 per cent off its wine and champagne. There's a very decent muscadet for £5.25, an aromatic rosé for £6.75, a seriously posh champagne for £30. Right now, as my metaphorical ship sails within touching distance of the shores of Britain's leading upscale supermarket, I'm breaking free of the ropes tying me to the mast. To misquote Withnail and I: 'I want these bargain wines, I want them here and I want them now.'
Yet, to give the metaphor a final push, as I near those shores I spy the jagged shorelines that will break my ship to pieces. And they are the rocks that are wrecking a cornerstone of our hospitality industry.
Each glass of moschofilero rosé 2024 that I sip at home is a glass that I won't be sipping at a bar. And it doesn't take too many bargain booze hunters to land a deal, invite friends around for drinks, then literally empty the local tavern.
The personal economics are not hard to fathom. For the cost of a single glass at the pub, we can drink a bottle at the kitchen table. For the price of a decent steak, chips, salad and a pud for one – £25 to £30 – we could feed some four people at home.
Faced with the logic of these costs, why on earth would we go to the pub?
Well, I'll tell you why. The Waitrose offer comes in the week that George Wendt died. You'll remember that Wendt played the barfly Norm Peterson in the sitcom Cheers and the character was loved, simply because there are aspiring Norms in every decent pub around the world. The pub provides a Norm with a place of refuge, the Norm provides the pub with character. The random conversations struck up with Norms, the casual quips, the banter between landlord and the Norm is what makes a pub special and what turns a pint into a soul-nourishing experience.
Shut the pub and the Norms have nowhere to go. Loneliness goes from sadness to tragedy, human society diminishes. And that's without making the obvious remarks about the livelihoods that are inevitably lost when pubs close.
And they are closing, as I write, at a rate of some 23 per month. In the first half of 2024, in England and Wales, it was over double that number.
And one of the reasons behind this obliteration is the affordability of supermarket booze. The latest Waitrose offer has been purposefully dangled before this Bank Holiday weekend, a three-day vacation during which Britain's pub landlords are hoping to make some hay, albeit while the rain pours.
But faced with a relentless marketing campaign to stock up on great-value booze from a leading supermarket, how on earth can they compete?
Firms like Waitrose can afford to unleash these offers. They have deep pockets, healthy marketing budgets and clever ways to fund such schemes.
See that Austrian red Lentsch zweigelt 2022 selling for £7.50 as part of a mixed six-plus bottle deal? You can bet your bottom dollar that the producers themselves are being pressured to fund it. A place on a supermarket shelf may seem like a golden ticket but it comes with listings fees, compulsory marketing spend and sleep-depriving contractual obligations to achieve a weekly sales target.
These being some of the dirty secrets of the supermarket industry I learnt during nearly two decades of producing magazines for supermarkets, including Waitrose. That is until I had an unseemly spat with a vegan and had to scuttle off and become your restaurant critic.
I remember spending time with a passionate and earnest producer of my favourite Greek assyrtiko wine in Santorini. I recall the pride he had of his Waitrose listing. I shan't forget his despondency when he was told he had to reduce his prices to fund a money-off wine event.
And will I succumb to the Pied Piper of Waitrose? Well yes, actually. But also, this Saturday, the landlord of our local pub, The Bear, is willing us in with his annual Mussels Festival. And so to assuage my guilt and because I love his pub, we'll have lunch there and sip some of his in-house brewed Black Bear ale.
I urge you to do the same. Head to your local pub, order a drink and strike up a conversation with your local Norm. You, and the world, will be a better place for it.