Duty free shops – where wine goes to die
I took the above photo at a Sydney Airport duty free store just this weekend gone.
I was wandering around looking at Champagne prices you see (Dom is cheap at the airport), and sauntered over to check out this bottle of 2008 Penfolds Bin 620 Cab Shiraz. I actually just wanted to have a poke around really, particularly as Penfolds know how to package their top rarities. Kicking the tyres I was.
What I saw though was all wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong. Wrong.
Forget the fact that the price is hardly ‘duty free’. Forget too how odd it is that such a wine is freely available, even though it was made in tiny quantities. Forget even that it’s sitting open in the middle of the store, that lovely box more marked and dog-eared by the day. None of it really matters, compared to one thing – that bright light beating down on the bottle…
The problem? They’re 5 wines that will all taste completely different, and all unlikely to taste anywhere near as good as they should. 5 wines, $475 worth of quality, Rhone-styled Waiheke Island red that, yet again, have been ruined by the scourge of the spotlight…
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8 Comments
Great observation AG. I’ve often been amazed at this sort of thing myself. I get the fact that retailers like to draw attention to wines with bright lights etc in order to sell it, but ruining the product in the process just seems ludicrous. I also wonder if people who are potential buyers of premium wines, people you would assume generally have half a clue about how to store wine (trophy-wine shoppers excluded, maybe), would look at this sort of display and have the exact same observation. “Oh wow, a great bottle of wine. Shame that it’s been cooked. Perhaps I’ll look for this wine elsewhere”. Your edit from the e-mail version of this article is duly noted. Preferred the e-mail version personally 😉
Very good observations AG – get this published! Also applies to many bottle shops. I can think of a few…
I'm always amazed at how many fine wines are displayed upright in a case under a spotlight. Foolish..
Hey AG, this is so true, I keep walking past the Dan Murphys in Newcastle that has a bottle of Salon 96 upright in a box with a bright light. It costs about $550. Makes me laugh when they call it the fine wine section.
PH
At least in a bottle shop you can return cooked wines – some level of insurance. Good luck travelling back to Auckland duty free to complain about a bottle!
Canbambar cellars in Canberra do it the best – there is a printed list of museum wines available in their climate controlled cellar. Pick something off the list, they get it for you to inspect, and purchase if you are happy. Win.
It's almost a pretty cogent argument for internet retailing: climate controlled warehoused wine to the point of sale stored in gloomy darkness, one hopes. It then only will need to cook in a white van or post office for 1-3 days to allow for delivery 😉
Despite sometimes looking in the wine section, exactly the reasons I only buy spirits duty free.
Apart from the issue of storage, for the most part "duty free" prices of wine are a joke. An Australian duty free store doesn't pay WET (29% of wholesale) or GST on stock. Yet most Penfolds and other big company reds are more expensive than at retailers. Basically preying on people with lots of money but no wine savvy.