Coles shocks snobs with $5 award-winning wine

The shiraz was named best Australian and New Zealand wine under $20 at the Winestate Wine of the Year Awards in Adelaide.

Katie Moyle, left, and Rebecca Polito sip the award-winning Big & Bold Shiraz 2015 from Coles. Picture: John Feder

You don’t get much for $5 these days; a cup of coffee at an inner city cafe, a large block of chocolate or perhaps the door knob from a house in Sydney or ­Melbourne.

Yet to the shock of the wine industry, purists, wine snobs and most probably the French, the ­nation’s second-biggest supermarket chain has just produced an award-inning bottle of wine that costs $5.

At $5 a bottle, it’s almost as cheap as water, but a wine owned by Coles has just swept aside some of Australia’s best known and loved wine brands to secure a coveted wine trophy.

Even more shocking than that, it’s a private label wine.

Coles’s Big & Bold Shiraz 2015, an Australian shiraz sold exclusively at Coles key liquor arms, ­Liquorland, Vintage Cellars, First Choice and Liquor Market, has been named as the best wine under $20 from Australia and New Zealand at the Winestate Wine of the Year Awards in Adelaide yesterday.

To take home the trophy, it beat wine labels such as McGui­gan, Lindemans, Banrock Station and Queen Adelaide and it is the first time a private label wine has won the award, as well as being the cheapest wine to ever bring home the silver.

A panel of expert judges including iconic Australian winemaker and pioneer Wolf Blass chose the Big & Bold Shiraz from a field of 10,000 wines. In its category of wines priced below $20 a bottle, it beat out nearly 1500 wines.

The wine was produced by Victorian winery McPherson Wines exclusively for Coles and is part of a growing array of private label wines filling the shelves of its supermarket liquor stores.

At $5 it will compete strongly with the private label wines offered by German discounter Aldi, whose liquor selection, ranging from wines to beers and spirits, in its supermarkets has been a strong drawcard for the new supermarket player.

“It was a shock and there was a fair bit of mirth when it was revealed the Coles wine won,’’ Winestate publisher and head of the judging panel Peter Simic told The Australian.

“We have never seen anything like it.’’