Where's the wine?

It is Friday evening. It's the end of another long week. Wine Goose is worn out and has rustled up a curry from a previously untried recipe, tonight using a selection of worn out vegetables - tired onions, rubbery mushrooms and bouncy carrots (all easily found at the bottom of most fridges on any given day) livened up with a healthy can of chick peas. Difficult though it is to go wrong with vegetarian dishes, perhaps Wine Goose was on this occasion a little heavy-handed with the spices. In an attempt to detract from the limited success of the meal, she runs her hand over the wine rack and selects a bottle of Clos du Val Zinfandel (€20.00) to accompany the meal, reflecting only momentarily on her increasingly expensive taste in wine.

Mr R is impressed. Tony Soprano drinks it with veal marsala, Sean Penn's 21 Grams character spends at least 5 minutes of valuable screen time with his hand wrapped around a bottle. It has also reared its neck in episodes of Desperate Housewives and Curb Your Enthusiasm. More importantly, at €20.00 a bottle, it actually has a lot more wine per bottle than your average €10.00 purchase.

Splash 1. That's €5.52 spent on tax, exise, duty and VAT. Splash 2. €8.00 forked out on packaging, distribution etc. And splash 3 leaves us with just €6.48 worth of wine.

Compare it lets say with a bottle around the €10.00 mark - Cono Sur Pinot Noir perhaps. Splash 1 takes up €3.78 on tax, exise, duty and VAT. Splash 2 consumes €4.00 on packaging, distribution etc. And splash 3, a meagre €2.22 worth of wine.

If the same process were repeated in Germany, Italy, Spain or Greece the price would instantly drop by the cost of the tax, as the excise rates on wine in these countries are, at nil, the lowest in Europe. Depressingly, Irish excise duties on both still and sparkling wine are the highest in the EU, and 6 times the EU average. All these facts and more are available on the very informative Wine Development Board website http://www.wineboard.ie/.

So when our local wine shop or supermarket presents us with special offers, how are they managing to cut costs? Wine Goose doesn't know, but welcomes suggestions. As a rule, if it's half price and you've never seen it on the shelves at full price, steer well clear. And of course if it's regular stock at a discount, snap it up.