Don't be fooled: we're still not a nation of wine experts

Don't believe everything you read in the news. According to a recent report we're all becoming wine buffs, showing discrimination in our choices of ever more expensive bottles. Last month, the exhibition organiser Vinexpo published its upbeat findings on wine consumption, revealing that the steepest growth in demand between 1997 and 2001 was for wines selling between £7.50 and £9.99. These were interpreted as proof of growing wine connoisseurship. Yet, if there's so much interest in quality wine, why, when Wine Magazine offered reduced subscriptions through Sainsbury's list of 750,000 customers, did only 24 people reply?

If only it were true that the yawning gulf between everyday plonk and fine wines was narrowing. I'm not convinced. Look again at the figures and they suggest that we can't get enough cheap wine. The same report shows that, despite a 19 per cent increase in wine consumption in those four years, well over twice as many – 70.6 million cases – of wine are sold for under £5 compared to the number bought for more than £5. We're only prepared to spend more than £7.50 on one in 10 bottles bought in the UK.

In supermarkets, which sell us three-quarters of our wine, a whopping 70 per cent of these bottles cost less than £4. Almost half of all supermarket wine is sold on promotion while two in every three bottles of Australian wine get a promotional leg-up. France may be clinging on, just, as the largest source of UK wine, but New World brands with special 20 per cent offs, BOGOFs (buy one, get one free) and other discounts in supermarkets are driving much of the growth in the UK.

Brands, to be sure, have worked wonders, introducing new consumers to the joys of wine. The fact remains, though, that the effect of brand discounting has been to lower prices and squeeze out smaller suppliers. Australian wine, for instance, has come down over the past two years from an average price of £4.54 a bottle to £4.35.

Everyday wine drinking has never been so cheap, and that applies to brands generally, not just to Australian wines. Thanks to a global surplus roughly equivalent to France's wine production, supermarkets have been able to take advantage of suppliers keen to be listed.

It's starting to look, however, as if this discounting and promoting mania can backfire. Australian wine giant Southcorp, which brings us Penfolds, Rosemount and Lindemans Bin 65, doubled sales last year by using discounts to grab a bigger market share. Now it's in trouble because aggressive promotional activity has brought plummeting profits, and with them, share prices. Who's next, I wonder?

Discounts don't really help us wine buyers, either. All the supermarket promotions do is condition us to head straight for the nearest wine on promotion, irrespective of quality. Many in the wine industry are becoming convinced that to maintain the same discounted price, not only is the choice reduced but the quality of the wine starts to suffer.

The constant temptation of promotions makes it harder for us to find and appreciate fine wines. Unless supermarkets and high street outlets make more effort to offer quality, wine-drinking will become even more split between a mass market of semi-industrial wines sought by shoppers hooked on cheapness and discerning customers who look elsewhere for their thrills.