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Why should that be? Time it was changed, I reckon. Step one: more 75cl bottles of everything that comes in them. Shelve them all together as a wine substitute.

"TheBeerNut":3mxwg19f wrote: Why should that be? Time it was changed, I reckon. Step one: more 75cl bottles of everything that comes in them. Shelve them all together as a wine substitute.[/quote:3mxwg19f]
I was thinking that on the way to work this morning. 75cl bottles would be good. I also think brewers need to up their game and charge accordingly. There's an upward ceiling of what beer is generally priced at (in and around €5 for 500ml) which is a tiny fraction of what people will pay for fairly bland wine. If better beer cost more, brewers would bne more likely to produce better beer*.





*or something

[quote:2n64cc5r]Does this mean that wine consumers are at a disadvantage because high-end retailers don't stock lower-end product?[/quote:2n64cc5r]
There is an infinitely wider selection of wines and a recognition amongst the public that if they want to buy a more interesting bottle of wine, that the place to go is a good wine shop / off-licence.
The same should be true of beer but the 'speciality' beer market in Ireland is still quite small. Budweiser, Dutch Gold, Bavaria and Heineken are still the drink of choice for most and all feature in the top 5 top selling beers in Ireland.

"1carrot2":3c9deihh wrote: There is an infinitely wider selection of wines[/quote:3c9deihh]I disagree. There are no more than half a dozen types of wine (red, white, rose, sparkling, fortified) sold in a handful of bottle sizes. Compare to: lagers, wheat beers, black beers, dark ales, pale ales, barley wines and fruit beers in cans and bottles of sizes from half a pint to five litres. when choosing a beer, the customer takes into account factors that they would never think about when choosing a wine.

"1carrot2":3c9deihh wrote: and a recognition amongst the public that if they want to buy a more interesting bottle of wine, that the place to go is a good wine shop / off-licence.[/quote:3c9deihh]But if they don't, they'll get a decent cheap Australian or Chilean from Tesco, right? The same holds true for beer, in that the specialist off licences won't stock this sort of wine because the supermarkets will always win on that ground. The same holds true for beer, and if people aren't making informed choices it's because the choice isn't being impressed upon them. How many stacked cases of Bulmer's do we all have to walk past to get at the sad and dusty import shelves in the corner of our favourite offies? Imagine if you had to crawl over boxes of Buckfast to peek at the St Émilions.

"1carrot2":3c9deihh wrote: the 'speciality' beer market in Ireland is still quite small.[/quote:3c9deihh]I'm not surprised, given that even speciality beer off licenses give so much display space to "non-speciality" beer. Almost all good beer off licences devote lots of their shelf space to wine, but they don't devote a similar proportion of their wine display space to Blossom Hill and Turning Leaf as they do to Bud and Miller in the beer section.

"1carrot2":3c9deihh wrote: Budweiser, Dutch Gold, Bavaria and Heineken are still the drink of choice for most and all feature in the top 5 top selling beers in Ireland.[/quote:3c9deihh]What are the biggest selling wines, and do you devote as much of your shop to them as you do to the above-named beers?

My point (inasmuch as I have one) is that good off licenses should not see themselves as competing with supermarkets. Butchers, bookshops, clothes shops, bakeries and many more have all adapted to the supermarkets horning in on their rackets and adapted to survive. I think the off licences will need to do the same. Your main competitor is the convenience store, who will be selling crap-to-mediocre beer and wine at well-above-cost prices. This is who you should be trying to take customers from.

(Hmmm, I'm no carpenter, but I think my soapbox may have become a pulpit...)

"TheBeerNut":imsb7fg9 wrote: I disagree. There are no more than half a dozen types of wine (red, white, rose, sparkling, fortified) sold in a handful of bottle sizes. Compare to: lagers, wheat beers, black beers, dark ales, pale ales, barley wines and fruit beers in cans and bottles of sizes from half a pint to five litres. when choosing a beer, the customer takes into account factors that they would never think about when choosing a wine.
[/quote:imsb7fg9]
That's a little simplistic. It could be argued that there are thousands of different wine varities, no body's going to confuse a Beaujolais with an Ozzie Shiraz even they're both still unfortified red wines. Even the same grape variety can produce vastly different wines, compare a Chablis to a Californian chardonay. I'd usually argue that there's more variety in beer than wine but I'm some what biased and I think there's more to different wines then youi let on.

"Wobbler":ee88e8vb wrote: It could be argued that there are thousands of different wine varities, no body's going to confuse a Beaujolais with an Ozzie Shiraz even they're both still unfortified red wines. Even the same grape variety can produce vastly different wines, compare a Chablis to a Californian chardonay.[/quote:ee88e8vb]Fair point. However, I think the Beaujolais buyer, or the person who'll specifically want a Californian chardonnay, not just any old Chablis, is the equivalent of the beer drinker who wants Fuller's Vintage, not just London Pride.

However, at the level where the distinction between a barleywine and a strong ale doesn't apply, the customer will not distinguish between a zinfandel and a cabernet shiraz either, IMO.