How to buy wine // The Le Blow guide to picking up cheap plonk from a corner shop [WITH PIE CHART]

Once again, I’m asking the BIG QUESTIONS. The ones that have the answers real people will really use. This weekend. I’d love it if my life had got to a point where I never found myself buying booze in a corner shop at 2am, but it hasn’t.

There are many, many corner shops, yet the beauty is they all have an identical selection of wine. One that is interestingly large in size, yet simultaneously narrow in quality and regional diversity (see chart below). This is not ideal but it does mean no matter where you are in London, this is the only guide you need.

Corner shop wine is best classified using two methods – a pie chart and some bullet points:

Corner Shop Pie Chart

  • Jacob’s Crack, Penfold’s, Oyster Bay – YES!
  • Echo Falls, Blossom Hill, anything by Julio & Ernest – NO!
  • Campo Viejo – YES!  Reliable and you can spot the yellow label a mile away even with double vision.
  • Anything with a fancy looking but unrecognisable French or Italian label – NO!  Baron Phillipe possibly OK, haven’t made my mind up about him. Need to re-taste.
  • Casillero del Diablo  – YES!  Why not? Bit jammy but far from embarrassing
  • Anything over £10 – NO!  What are you doing? It’s never going to be that good. It’s 2am for Christ’s sake. Even my fussy palate doesn’t care that much at that time of night. In any case, you’ll already have squandered £1.85 on the cash machine to withdraw the most expensive £10 note ever.

Print this out and keep it in your bag. You might need it this weekend. You might need it tonight.

  • Comments

  • avatar
    Tabitha

    This is both hilarious and actually genuinely informative!

  • avatar
    Colin

    The hidden secret: Barefoot Merlot. Good first day open, AMAZING second day and never seen it more than £5.99

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