Portuguese Wine is Revealed to be "Best Value Wine Available in UK"

LONDON, November 17, 2014 /PRNewswire/ --

- Portugal leads the pack in offering the most decent wine at great prices and value.

- wotwine review also finds that Europe including Spanish and French wines in British supermarkets are better value than most offerings from the New World.

- Over 4,000 wines tasted by wotwine's expert tasting team over the last 18 months - the most authoritative review of supermarket wine ever undertaken

     (Photo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20141117/717309 )

The Portuguese wines currently being sold in British supermarkets offer considerably more value for money than other nations' wine, according to an extensive 18-month review by wotwine.

The supermarket wine app (which has tasted 4,280 supermarket wines) has found 65 per cent of Portuguese wines on sale on UK supermarket shelves offer "extra/fair value for money". wotwine has singled out Lidl's Torre de Ferro Dao at £4.99 (wotwine values this wine at £9) and Asda's Extra Special Dao at £5.00 (wotwine's value: £7) as just two red Portuguese wines with exceptional value.  Wotwine has found that Port, which has been reviewed ahead of the important Christmas season, is the best value wine in the World. Wotwine cited Dow's Trademark Finest Reserve Port which is on offer at Sainsbury's for £6.75 as a complete steal, and most brands and own label Ports from simple Ruby through to aged Tawny and Vintage being really good wines and amazing value for money.

It's a different story for New World nations, with wotwine finding that 71% of all American and South African wines, 62% Australian and 64% New Zealand wines represent "poor value" for money.  Wotwine was disappointed that our home UK wines represent the poorest value on supermarket shelves. But this is influenced by British Made wines, made in the UK from imported grape must, which are mostly very poor manufactured tasting products merchandised alongside wine, but are not wine at all.

English sparkling wines are generally excellent in quality, and wotwine rated many better than a number of dull own label Champagnes, but when great non-vintage Champagnes like Pol Roger, Louis Roederer and Bollinger are on offer regularly for around £30, it tends to make the English sparklers look expensive.

"Portugal is producing characterful well-made wines of real interest, and the various different regions and grape varietals grown from the north Douro region down to the Algarve gives some wonderful variety of styles, tastes and flavours," says Orsi Szentkiralyi, wotwine's tasting manager.                       "They have the taste of the sun and thousands of years of wine-growing tradition, and represent cracking value too. We wish the range stocked in supermarkets was bigger."

Master of Wine Christopher Burr who is head of tasting at wotwine, commenting on the results said, "France has done well, particularly as a number of famous names like Sancerre, Chablis and Chateauneuf du Pape are often poor value and drag the result down. Bordeaux (claret) is great value for money   as is the Rhone, and regions like the Jura, Alsace, Provence, and the Languedoc."

wotwine, which has been described as the "Shazam of wine", recently launched new versions of its app on the iPhone and Android. Bringing together some of the most authoritative figures in the British wine industry (including four Masters of Wine), wotwine's tasters have tasted and evaluated nearly all of the wines available in the UK's major supermarket chains, tasting 70-140 bottles a week.

By simply scanning the barcode of a bottle in a supermarket, the free app allows consumers to determine whether its shelf price represents good value for money. If the shelf price is less than the wotwine valuation, they're bagging a true deal. Since launching in December 2013, wotwine users have scanned over 70,000 bottles of wine and found nearly 25,000 good value bottles.

NOTES TO EDITORS

wotwine has been named The Sun's 'App of the Week' and has featured in the Daily Mail, Metro, Cosmopolitan, Daily Express, The Evening Standard's ES magazine, and more recently in the Mirror, Telegraph and Independent

wotwine is available on iPhone, Android and at wotwine.com

For more information please visit wotwine.com

The wotwine app is free to download now from the iTunes App Store and Google Play.

Members of wotwine's tasting and management panel are available for interviews and to offer their expertise and/or a demonstration.

About wotwine

wotwine is 100 per cent independent, purchasing every single bottle of wine tasted.

All nine major supermarkets are covered: Asda, Aldi, the Co-op, Lidl, Marks & Spencer, Morrisons, Sainsbury's, Tesco and Waitrose

wotwine's authoritative nine-person tasting team is led by Nicholas Clarke, former Chairman of Institute of the Masters of Wine and Christopher Burr, former International Head of Wine at Christie's Auction House. To ensure that the tasting team get a thorough overview of quality and value, they comparatively taste all the wines stocked from a particular category (such as all Chablis, or all Argentinian Malbec). They meet twice weekly to keep the database current to ever-changing supermarket shelves.

More info: 16 million consumers buy wine from UK supermarkets with a total wine expenditure of around £4.6 billion.

On average a person will spend £287.50 a year on store-purchased wine. At an average cost per bottle of £4.99 that means they buy between 57 and 58 bottles a year. (2012 Nielsen/TGI).

Please note: All supermarket retail prices quoted above are subject to change.