UK Wine Online Guide - Where should You buy Wine?

With a view to creating a comprehensive guide on the best UK online wine merchants we reviewed 25 or so online wine shops that were stong candidates. The ratings were on a 5 star scale with 1 star allocated to each of these 5 factors - fun (is it a fun shopping experience?), navigation (is it quick and easy to go through the website and find what you’re looking for?), value for money (is it money well spent?), information (does the website provide information to help you make a better choice), and quality (do they sell strong quality brands and products?).  I will warn you that the ‘value for money’ metric is not fully polished.

The Top 5 Wine Shops - Basically you can’t go wrong with these.

1. Berry Bros and Rudd - 4.25 stars and a bonus .5 star for having a blog, podcasts and videos. Also bonus .5 star for having a great shopping experience. They also have a really well rated Wine Club.
2. Chateau Online - 4.25 Stars and a bonus .5 star for having amazing information including Tasting Notes and Robert Parker ratings.
3. Laithwaites Wine Merchants - 4 stars, they won Independent Wine Merchant of the Year 2007, and their range is amazing - for example, 79 Chilean, 753 French, and 196 Spanish wines. For a quick comparison Tesco has 52 chilean, 193 French, and 59 Spanish wines.
4. Majestic Wine - 4.25 stars and a bonus .5 star for having the very best Wine Guide.
5. Averys Wine Mechants - 4 stars. Cheapest shipping I’ve found. Add on the 25 pounds off discount code for first time customers and that you can buy just 1 bottle if you like and its the clear winner in terms of price.

The Top 3 Wine Deals [Will be added soon and then updated every week or so].

The Top 2 Alcohol Shops - Again these are beautiful shops. They don’t provide as much user information as the Wine Shops and still get comparable ratings because of the lack of competition in alcohol and spirit shops. The average Wine shop is much better done than in any other niche/market I have reviewed so far.

1. The Whiskey Exchange - 4.25 stars and a bonus star for having 1300 different Single Malt Whiskies, and similar range across all spirits and liquers. 
2. The Drink Shop - 4 stars and a super cool cocktails guide. 

The Top Supermarket Wine

1. Waitrose (1 star each on Information and Fun), Ocado (3.75 stars) - This is slightly confusing as Waitrose has amazing information and pictures - however they branch you off to Waitrose direct which doesn’t really have an up to bar website. So I’d recommend reading about wine at Waitrose.com and then buying from Ocado which has just superb navigation and prices. Researching at Waitrose and buying at ocado equates to a 4 star experience.

Thats effectively the top 8 of the 25 shops I reviewed - The average wine website is however very well done and the other wine websites merit a closer look too (especially if they have good deals). Before we go on to other wine shops we have Wine Gift Shops a few of which are impressive

1. Vintage Wine Gifts does an excellent job of focusing on its core competency i.e. fine wine gifts and delivers a super user experience. 3.75 stars because the navigation is a bit spotty. However, in effect a 4 star shop if you’re looking to pick a gift for someone.
2. WineShare - Solid 4 star shop since 75 pounds lets you gift someone a row of vines in a vineyard that has won a gold medal at wine competitions. Also really answers all your questions. And you can go visit your vines anytime.

The Really Good Websites 

1. Sunday Times Wine Club - 4 stars. They go for more of a modern look and do boast one of the most popular Wine Clubs in the UK. Barely miss the top 5.
2. Marks and Spencer 3.75 stars. Rally good store however the lack of information and slightly pricey wine stops it from being a 4 star shop.
3. Last Orders.com - 3.5 stars. A really good gift website hampered by a lack of range. This is one of the websites I’d love to bump up to 4 stars.
4. The Alcohol Free Shop - 3.5 stars. sell zero alcohol and <.05% alcohol beers and wine, and also alcohol free beauty products. 
5. Waitrose Wine Direct - 3.5 stars.

The Rest

1. Tesco Wine - 3.25 stars.
2. Sainsburys - 3.25 stars.
3. Virgin Wines - 3.25 stars.
4. Oddbins - 3 stars. 
5. Sparkling Direct - 3 stars. This isn’t as much of a wine shop as it is a gift shop. 
6. WineandCo - 2.75 stars. The language tanslation messup holds them back.
7. Threshers - You can see the offers online and that’s it as you can’t buy online.
8. ASDA Wine - Left incomplete as the navigation drove me crazy. 
9. Morrisons/Safeway - Do not have an online store. 

Related posts you might like

• Virgin Wines Wine Guide, Discount Codes, Sales
• Laithwaites Wine Website Rating and Guide
• Berry Brothers and Rudd Wine Guide and Shop Rating
• WineShare - Amazing Gift for Winelovers
• WineandCo Wine Review Wine and Co Ratings