Thanks to the speeding up of bottling of wine at source, joining the Common Market in 1973 gave supermarkets the necessary boost to start putting their own name on the wine label. If it lent credence to the notion that the supermarket own-label wine was now respectable enough to plonk on the dinner table, some would say that it was no more than plonk. As Simon Loftus wrote in 1985, ‘a good many wine lovers see the supermarket own-label range as offering the dull decency of wines blended for general acceptability’. As a pioneering wine merchant, Mr.Loftus had a vested interest in the more adventurous, but he was right to predict that supermarket own-label selections would become more extensive and better value as and when supermarkets started to go direct to the vineyard to source their wines, to invest in design and marketing, and to improve their brand by going upmarket. And they did.

In a generation, we’ve become familiar with the the Tesco, Sainsbury’s or M&S own-label with its implication of good value. With own-label and exclusively imported wines representing over 40 per cent of sales for supermarket and high street chains, it’s helped turn wine into a mass market business. Most supermarkets today have a basic own label and at least a higher quality tier, for instance Tesco’s Finest, Sainsbury’s Taste the Difference, Asda Extra Special and so on. Over time, own-label has become more than respectable and purged once and for all the image of wine as the elite province of the rich and stuffy. By the mid-1980s, own-label may have been in danger of extinction but it was rescued by the advent of Australia, California, Chile, Argentina and South Africa, and the idea, dear to the supermarket ethos, that wine, as a drink, is a product like any other on the shelf.

But how do you tell your Tesco chablis from your M&S chablis, your Waitrose champagne, from your Asda, or your Tesco’s Finest from your Asda Extra special? Enter one Caspar Auchterlonie, a suitably ruddy-faced former tastings co-ordinator for the now defunct Wine International. It was Caspar’s long cherished ambition to set up the own-label Championship ‘to inform the consumer of the best value wines and other alcoholic beverages’ on the shelf’. With that object in mind, a panel of judges assembled over three days in February at Planet of the Grapes in New Oxford Street first to do a pre-sorting and then to proceed to a final judging of under £5 and over £5 own-label wines available in the supermarkets, major multiples and department stores throughout the UK. Well, most, anyway. For reasons of their own. Sainsbury’s and Majestic didn’t bother to enter, the Co-op and Somerfield missed the deadline, while none of Spar, Booths or Morrisons’ few entries made the final.

427 products, beers and spirits included, were entered with 82 finalists and 31 category trophy winners and awards given to the overall best white, the 2007 Waitrose Sancerre from Alphonse Mellot, and best red wine, the 2006 Marks & Spencer Barossa Shiraz from St.Hallett, £7.99. The standard was generally high with seven category winners from Tesco and six from M&S and surprisingly only two from Waitrose, while humble Aldi managed three in the under £5 category. M&S had the largest number of finalists at 12 while Tesco had nine, Waitrose and Asda three apiece. Only six of the 27 white and eight of the 27 red wine categories were under £5 with no sparkling, sweet, fortified or rosé wines under a fiver. Which shows that even at own-label level, you’re having to pay more for quality, all the more since the Chancellor’s budget all but eliminates quality at under the £5 bar. I aim to cover more of the best value high street wines over the coming weeks, but for a snapshot preview of the winners and finalists, check out the website at http://www.ownlabelawards.com/index_files/results.htm

Something For the Weekend 12 April 2008

Under a Fiver

2007 Tesco Pinotage, Swartland Winery, £3.69, Tesco

Bringing the vivid freshness of the new vintage to this typical South African red made from the Cape’s indigenous pinotage grape, this bright, berry fruity red from the Swartland Co-operative is made for the first rite of spring barbecue.

Under a Tenner

2007 Sancerre Waitrose, Joseph Mellot, Waitrose, £9.99, Waitrose

White wine trophy winner, this classy sauvignon blanc from the family house of Joseph Mellot with its herby, nettley aromas and intensity of fruit flavour is backed up by an undertone of Sancerre’s flinty minerality.

Splash Out

2005 Châteauneuf-du-Pape, Domaine Sénéchaux, £19, Marks & Spencer

This classic blend of grenache, syrah and mourvèdre displays the typical spiciness and intense plummy fruit quality of the southern Rhône’s top appellation allied to the concentration of an excellent vintage in 2005.