This pesky virus has stopped us going to France to buy wine. It is also affecting wine production and the harvest.
I am now having to use stocks of wine which I would normally keep for a couple of years longer to allow them to improve in the bottle.
Three such wines are are:Villa Antorini Toscana Red 2018, Argentinian Catena Malbec Red 2017 and Chateau Pey La Tour 2018 Red. All three of these wines are perfectly drinkable now but deserve keeping longer. You could say why not buy your everyday wine in an English supermarket. It's the price, in a French supermarket I can buy a reasonable wine for 5 Eur , in the UK a bottle of standard wine costs around 7 pounds. The price of wine has shot up. This is because the pound has shot down and is falling further.
The value of sterling no longer hits the headlines but some analysts are predicting parity with the US dollar where the situation now means 1£ equals $1.20. At this rate 1 pound will become less valuable than 1 Euro.
You could say why not buy and drink English wine. The only English wine that comes close to rivaling an ordinary continental equivalent is English sparkling wine. English sparkling wine is, however, much more pricey than Champagne or Cava. The english producers cannot benefit from economies of scale and the price will not be competitive, in the UK, unless the pound falls through the floor.
None of this is a good prospect for a wine lover and I ask myself : "Where is the off-setting benefit?"
