Halley - The best wines in the supermarkets 2013: my top wines selected for character and style

The supermarkets are always in trouble for something. Its usually for squeezing independent retailers, including wine merchants, out of the market. Or its for crushing the life out of suppliers by screwing prices down below the cost of production.

Occasionally, its something a bit more particular. This year, besides the customary lobbyist hysteria about supermarkets selling cheap booze and precipitating everything from binge drinking to the demise of the British pub, it has been a very public complaint from a wine-trade grandee that supermarket wines are incredibly dull and we shouldnt waste our money on them. Graham Mitchell, a member of the dynasty that owns the famed 130-year-old London merchant and wine-bar operator El Vino, says that much of the cheaper wine on sale in the UK lacks character, is bland and blended for the mass-market brands, and massively discounted in a supermarket or big retail chain. Shoppers, he advises, should avoid 2.99 wines and invest at least 9.99: Although its only three times the price, you are getting eight times the quality.

I had to address these trenchant views when I was contacted by a reporter from The Independent newspaper. As the author of The Best Wines in the Supermarkets , would I like to comment on what Mr Mitchell had to say?

Well, I had to agree about 2.99 wines. The 2012 Budget raised the excise duty on still wine to 1.90 per 75cl, which puts the non-tax value of a 2.99 bottle at 60p. Yes, thats 2.39 duty and VAT, leaving just the 60p to cover the cost of making the wine, bottling and transporting it, and earning margins for the producer, the importer/distributor and the supermarket. It doesnt compute. Which explains why the 2.99 bottle of wine is (or should be) extinct.

Mr Mitchells assertion that 9.99 is the threshold for good wine is much less clear-cut. The idea that one wine can be eight times better than another holds no water at all. Tasting great numbers of wines as I do, I have learned a universal principle: price is an unreliable guide to how much you can expect to like any individual wine.

The average retail price we pay in the supermarkets for wine is about 4.60 a bottle. Thats less than half Mr Mitchells minimum, but it is also half as much again as 2.99. It demonstrates that we are indeed willing to pay a sensible amount for wine, starting at somewhere around a fiver.

This year I have found close to 500 wines to recommend in this 2013 edition of The Best Wines in the Supermarkets , and one in five of them is priced at under 6. Sixty of these come in under 5, including 15 under 4, and none below 3. But the greatest number of wines, unsurprisingly, fall into the space between 6 and 10, taking the proportion of wines below Mr Mitchells threshold to about three-quarters of the overall total.

But thats supermarket wines for you. The retail giants dont place a lot of emphasis on fine wines if wines costing 10-plus can be defined as such. In fact, after doing this count of wines in the different price brackets, I find myself a little surprised that more than a hundred of those I have picked out do exceed 10. My own instinctive parsimony, amplified by the continuing economic crisis, makes me wary of extravagance. So anything I recommend above a tenner (and very occasionally above a twenty) is a serious recommendation indeed.

This is a suitable point at which to mention the scoring system I use in this book. Its a simple 0 to 10 scale, but it is strictly relative, because I take the price of each wine closely into consideration. At the time of tasting, I fix each wine at a point on the scale. When youre tasting 100 or even 200 wines in a single session, you have to score them in situ. Theres no chance of recalling how much you liked more than a handful of individual wines from a really long day.

Any wines I have noted with a score of 6 or above get keyed into the longlist from which the final selection is drawn. Only a few of the 6- or 7-scoring wines make the cut, because while I liked them, I might have been unconvinced on value grounds. It is the 8-scoring wines that make up the greatest number. They are absolutely sound wines at what I believe to be justifiable prices. A score of 9 indicates special interest and value. A score of 10 goes to any wine I have found exceptionally delicious, at a completely fair price.

All that said, I must muddy the waters again by mentioning discounts. Supermarkets are addicted to them. There are regular price wars. During this persistent recession, Sainsburys and Tesco have frequently reduced wine prices by as much as 25 per cent for multiple purchases (usually six bottles) for a week or two at a time. Very often, these periods coincide exactly. I dont know who starts it. Asda goes in for similar promos known as roll-backs, and even Waitrose always has a long list of wines on discount, regularly of up to a third off the shelf price.

Online, Marks & Spencer is forever offering big cuts in case prices. This sometimes applies to the entire range. Tesco does the same. These offers are not necessarily extended to the stores, so bargain hunters should make a habit of checking the respective websites.

The most persistent discounter of them all is Majestic. At any one time, maybe half the wines are on multibuy offer: buy two bottles, get 20 per cent off. Given that the Majestic miracle has been manifested by the policy of a minimum purchase (now six bottles, any mix) it makes this choice of promotion method a no-brainer. It certainly seems to work. Majestic is booming, and the sole survivor among the national high street wine merchant chains. Much as I admire the wines diversity and quality both run deep I dont believe theyd have done it without the discounts.

In this edition, there has been a new entrant among the supermarkets and, Im sad to say, an exit. Aldi, the no-frills chain, is the debutante. Although I have over the years occasionally popped into both Aldi and Lidl branches to buy a few aspirant-looking wines, I have not been able to summon up enough enthusiasm to make a listing among The Best Wines in the Supermarkets . But now Aldi has kindly let me taste a selection from its core range the wines youre most likely to find on shelf, as distinct from occasional special parcels and I have liked a good number of them. Welcome aboard!

The exit is the Lancashire-based supermarket chain EH Booth. This redoubtable, family-owned company remains very much in business, and still has a range of about 800 wines on offer to shoppers in its 28 branches in northern England. But Booths has now closed its web-based operation, everywine.co.uk, which made a huge selection of wines available to online customers nationwide. I can therefore no longer include the company in the guide.