THE LITTLE THINGS IN LIFE

I'm still on the hunt for half bottles of wine but I'm not really having much luck. The only offerings tend to be sweet wines which I very rarely drink or prosecco-like sparklings which are crap.
Glengarry has a Champagne Moutard at $24 for a 375ml bottle which I might give a try but I really want good chardonnay and pinot noir.

Villa Maria to give them credit do a range of the Private Bin in 375ml which is available in supermarkets but I'm looking for higher quality wines.

Years ago many brands carried 375 ml variants (and bigger formats) of their best wines but this fell away when bigger production volumes demanded greater efficiencies and reduced costs and price points. 375 mls fell out of favour with stockists who presupposed that the consumer didn't want to pay more than half price for a half bottle of wine. In a way they were right given that 750ml bottles are so often on special so the price difference between the two sizes has become greater but they have misread the possible demand through convenience of the smaller format.
The economies are easy to work out. While there is only half the cost of the wine and the excise in the bottle the cost of the bottle, the label and the carton of the 375ml might actually be higher than the cost of the 750ml bottle, the label and the carton due to smaller production runs.

I've written about this before HERE and HERE.

750ml bottles with screw-caps (the format that I buy wine in 95% of the time) are convenient and keep in the fridge opened for up to a week but often I don't want to go through a whole bottle of the same wine day after day and it'd be nice to have the choice with smaller bottles. When it is the two of us a 375ml bottle of pinot noir say provides a nice generous glass for each of us.

Thorndon New World in Wellington used to stock a neat little range of quality half bottles including Te Mata Elston chardonnay. I'll be spending a bit of time in Wellington next year so hopefully they still will be doing this.

In New Zealand and I guess in most countries around the world wine purchasing is being done in supermarkets and bigger producers with greater volume efficiencies and economies of scale dominate. These producers through selling greater volumes have bigger advertising and promotional funds to ensure that they stay on the shelves. Smaller producers are forever getting squeezed and are casualties of ranging wars.

Smaller producers though, if they want to establish points of difference could do themselves a favour by producing ranges of half bottles these being of the same quality rating as their standard bottles i.e. not some cheaper crap wine. Being small these producers won't have the huge economies of scale in production of their main lines so a sub-set of 375 ml ranges might not necessarily be too much different in pro rata pricing. They will of course be more than half the price of the 750ml wine but shouldn't be say twice the price or more.

I hope that some of these guys will wake up to the opportunity.