Buying Wine

[bdx]

Hi all, just for info, there are now some good options to buy wine in Singapore at reasonable prices, but you need to look hard in internet ads. What you will find in stores or supermarkets will not always be of best quality for the price you pay. As they say, the cost of the empty bottle, cork, labels and all transport / storage being fixed costs, the content will eventually be affected when the price looks too good!

[textex]

I tend to agree with bdx on this. Almost all the white wine "specials" from the big shops are too aged for drinking, must be due to the heat/storage in Singapore. Now I just buy really young chard/sauv blanc from there and also source nicer bottles from smaller shops.

Tex.

[carteki]

The South African shop has a selection of South African wines and if you're on their mailing list you will get to hear of their specials. They have an outlet in Katong Mall (4th floor) and in Bukit Timah. Can't comment on the price v quality though, but I have found that for other stuff they are usually cheaper than the chains.

[jpatokal]

Dropped into Wine+ Superstore in Novena the other day, and I have to say I wasn't too impressed. Sure, the selection is decent, but pricing seemed pretty high, especially if you're not buying 6 bottles at a time; the Oz bulk brands you see in supermarkets all the time for $20 or less (Wolf Blass etc) were going for $25-29. Not too many other customers around either... but they did have samples on offer, and we picked up a fairly nice NZ Sauvignon Blanc as a result.

[sierra2469alpha]

...the Oz bulk brands you see in supermarkets all the time for $20 or less (Wolf Blass etc) were going for $25-29....

That's why you shop around, isn't it ??!!!

I did point out in my original post that they have good 1/2 and case prices. I wouldn't buy single bottles there, but that's just a personal preference.

[jpatokal]

...the Oz bulk brands you see in supermarkets all the time for $20 or less (Wolf Blass etc) were going for $25-29....

That's why you shop around, isn't it ??!!!

Well, yeah, but I was still surprised that a store whose business model is to sell large volumes of wine, wine and only wine is still that much more expensive that my local supermarket. They're going to limit themselves to people who buy by the case, and since restaurants etc deal directly with wholesalers instead, I can't imagine this is too big a market in Singapore...

[sierra2469alpha]

Yeh agreed, maybe that's why they put a store at Novena - a bit lower rent but close enough for the expat community (a likely market) ???? Still, if you do buy wine by the case (like we do) then it's more affordable there - just get the quaffers from the supermarket when they are on special.

Did you notice though that they have a good range of spirits and beer? Spirits are next to the checkout, and beer across the rear of the store. Beer prices there are pretty shocking, though...was feeling a little homesick some weeks ago and decided to treat myself to a 6pack of Crown Lager...financial disaster!

Cheers, Mr. P

[peppy17]

The singapore market for wine is just above average. I just posted a topic about importing wine from the UK (and I'm french btw), if someone knows the process that would be helpfull!!

THX

[UK-HK-SIN]

I did my first BIG shop this weekend at Carrefour to stock up on all the basics i need for our new house......obviously wine was also on this list and they were doing a special on Jacobs Creek and I decided to buy them for my husbands office / house warming party we will host.

The deal was 25 dollars a bottle across all the range and buy 2 get 1 free. Not bad considering the prices of all the other wines here so we bought 3 cases. I paid and went to arrange delivery and only when I was waiting to arrange I read through the receipt and discovered that we had been charged for 36 bottles - not 24. Apparently the till system here is not automatically updated with promotions. so I went to cust services and got a refund - no problem - but just wanted to let people know to check receipts carefully for this.....oh yeah and it is quite a good deal

[mrdodge]

The singapore market for wine is just above average. I just posted a topic about importing wine from the UK (and I'm french btw), if someone knows the process that would be helpfull!!

THX

Well, importing wine, from a freight perspective, is easy. You will just have to pay duty & GST, which will be a bit painful. The rate is $70 per liter of alcohol. So a case of wine , average 15% alcohol (and they really do round things up) will cost you around $200 in duty. If you have the time, you can probably shephard it through customs yourself, but when I have done it in the past via a freight agent its worked out to about that.

Cheers

[The Alchemist]

I assume that charge of $200 per case must have included extra handling and clearance charges by the importing agent??

Reason being that 12 bottles (750ml each) equates to only 9 litres of wine. Thus at 15% alcohol per litre there is only 1.35 litres of dutiable alcohol in the case. So by reckoning only $95 of duty per case.
If not, what have I missed?

[mrdodge]

I assume that charge of $200 per case must have included extra handling and clearance charges by the importing agent??

Reason being that 12 bottles (750ml each) equates to only 9 litres of wine. Thus at 15% alcohol per litre there is only 1.35 litres of dutiable alcohol in the case. So by reckoning only $95 of duty per case.
If not, what have I missed?

Having just done this very thing this week the duty component cost about $111 a case. This charge all went to the government - freight was another matter of course.

i would not do this too often, because it really does make the wine almost too expensive to drink. There were special circumstances for this time - but it seems to me with all the various specialist suppliers around, you can get pretty drinkable stuff at reasonable prices now, which is quite different from even a few years ago.