A nasty hiccup in Majestic Wine’s half-year results as its fine-wine merchant Lay & Wheeler’s profit dropped by £400,000, a not inconsiderable amount given the whole company made profits of only £7.7 million, down from £8.4 million.
For drinkers of £6 bottles of Argentinian Malbec rather than £250 bottles of Château Haut-Brion there is little to worry about.
But for Majestic investors, who have seen the shares fall by a third in the past 12 months, this was more unwanted news.
And it is all the fault of that 2013 Beaujolais vintage. A cold spring and violent storms meant it was a small harvest but potentially fine vintage.
Sadly the market did not bear that out, as Lay & Wheeler found over summer when people decide what to lay down in their cellars. You can pick up great 2007 vintages for less than 2013 ones.
Perhaps, like our banks, wine retailers should be made to ring-fence their risky top-end business.
Keep the reliable business of selling wine for drinking now separate from that of buying wine for drinking in the future.
After all its those very same bankers who got us into the financial crisis who drive the top end of the wine market. Make them suffer and keep it affordable for the rest of us to drown their sorrows.
