Value for Money Part 2
If you’re one of the 70% of people who don’t * make up their mind what brand you’re going to buy until you’re in the store you might well be wondering what advice Hughesy can offer when it comes to wine purchases. Actually, I may be able to help quite a bit.
As indicated in the previous post, the same source indicated the top five Australian wine brands in terms of last bottle purchased were Jacob's Creek, De Bortoli, Wolf Blass, Brown Brothers and cleanskins, which might not be a brand as such but is a big enough share of the market to warrant being considered as one.
Now, if you’re in the habit of buying any of the first four of those, you’re more than likely going to be more or less satisfied with your purchases.
I don’t go out of my way to buy Jacob’s Creek, but at the same time I won’t turn around and bolt when someone offers me a glass. And occasionally they turn out a very good drop, like the 2006 Riesling (Halliday rating 94, remarkable in a $10 wine).
De Bortoli have snared a sizeable chunk of the bag in a box market, and if I was going to invest in a cask, that’s probably the first brand I’d be looking at. If you’re looking at the extreme value end of the spectrum it’s hard to go past their Sacred Hill range, which I’ve seen as low as $5 a bottle. Again, remarkably good value. I you’re looking at a wine to go with spicy Asian food, it may well be worth in shelling out the five or six bucks for a bottle of the Sacred Hill Traminer Riesling.
Given the resources Fosters can draw on you’d expect the Wolf Blass entry level wines to be (at least) consistent so you can probably be confident where that brand is concerned and the care with which Brown Brothers have grown their range of varietal wines means you’re not likely to find many duds if you head in that direction.
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* (According to the AC Nielsen survey quoted by James Halliday in the Weekend Australian Magazine Food and Wine issue in mid-April 2009)