British supermarkets and retail chains tend to rotate their special offers around the same old big brands and this nasty habit is, if anything, increasing. Anyone for a Jacob's Creek multibuy or a pound off a Rosemount diamond label blend? Australia features most commonly because its exporters are commercially most astute – and the companies are nice and big, or nasty and big depending on your point of view.
Coop stores in Britain, however, are offering a whole £1.50 off bottles of a wine I actually recommended in my survey of the new Orange region in New South Wales last summer, Little Boomey Cabernet Merlot 2000. It has a terrible name, but its marketing person let slip to me that more care (for which read 'more expensive oak') was lavished on this debut vintage than we are likely to see in the 2001 version. Not that the result is at all oaky, just deeply flavoured, well balanced and satisfying. The usual selling price is £5.99 but it is reduced to £4.49 at those Co-op stores which stock it until 8 December. In theory it can also be ordered online at www.co-opdrinks2u.com
Two of the best supermarket chains for their wine selection are based in the north of England, Booths of Lancashire and Morrisons of Yorkshire (though both spread their tentacles more widely than these two rival counties – and Morrisons have branches as far south as Chingford in Essex and Erith in Kent). Booths has the more upmarket wine selection, and runs the enterprising site www.everywine.co.uk which attempts to supply literally every wine available retail in Britain. But Morrisons have a good track record for special offers at Christmas. Yet again they have reduced the price of Castillo de Molina Reserve Chilean Cabernet made very successfully by San Pedro, normally £5.99, although this year it is reduced by only one pound to £4.99. Two years ago it was reduced to just £3.99 which was a real snip but this year's two-pound Morrisons reductions from £5.99 to £3.99 apply to Lindemans Bin 65 Chardonnay (which used to be £4.99 anyway and isn't tasting as exciting as it used to), Rondell Cava and Capanna al Sole Chianti Classico – which is surely an insult to that carefully protected denomination. All these reductions apply until January 6.
I actually found a relative bargain in Harrods wine department recently, rather to my surprise. The Knightsbridge store has a pretty impressive range, including some of the few bottles of Casa Lapostolle's current vintage of Clos Apalta 1999 at £27.50, one of the few top Chilean reds worth the money, but you generally have to pay heavily for it. This range includes a surprisingly wide range of Harrods' own-label wines of which the Harrods Premier Cru Non Vintage Champagne probably is worth the £18.95 it has cost for years – and is certainly worth it if you happen to value the Harrods brand name per se. It comes from Hostomme of Chouilly and the current bottling tastes attractively mature and rich. This would make a great present for homesick Britons stationed abroad. See www.harrods.com.