Lifting the lid on supermarket wine promotions

9 out of 10 of the bottles of wine we drink in the UK are bought from the major supermarket chains, and 60% of those are on discount. So The Guardian newspaper set out to find out whether those half price deals and two for a tenner are genuine.

This weekend the Money section features their investigation into price promotions in which it asked mySupermarket.co.uk to track the pricing on some of the major wine brands sold in the supermarkets in the past year. The findings show a zig-zag pattern where prices are established at artificially high levels to meet legal trading requirements then cut to give shoppers the impression they are obtaining a bargain.

The paper also talked to industry insiders – including the former head of wine at Sainsbury's, who says many of the promotions are manufactured. Shoppers, he says, are being told a £5 bottle is half price when it was never worth £10.

Taken as an example is Tesco's Ogio Pinot Grigio, one of the supermarket's top selling wines. This weekend it is on sale at £5.49, marketed as half price, down from £10.99. The figures from mySupermarket show that Tesco priced the wine at £10.99 for just 63 out of the last 365 days. Indeed, for almost the same length of time – 58 days – the Ogio Pinot Grigio was on sale at Tesco for £4.99. Buyers of the half price wine this weekend are actually paying 50p more than they were in July this year.

Its a similar pattern at Sainsbury's and Asda, but at Waitrose there are far fewer promotions and Aldi does not price promote its wines. Morrisons wasn't included in the analysis.