VIRGIN WINES AND SAINSBURY'S IN SPAT OVER 'WINE' BUYERS

Published: 23 July, 2008

Sainsbury's has hit back at claims made in an email sent by Virgin Wines to its customers that to work as a supermarket wine buyer you don't need to know anything about wine'.

We think you might be annoyed to discover that it's often someone that knows less about wine than you that chooses the selection available,' stated the email. In response, Sainsbury's sent out a press release to put the record straight', listing the credentials of its wine buying team, which includes two MWs.

Rowan Gormley, founder of Virgin Wine, told Harpers: Virgin Wines has never suggested that all supermarket buyers know very little about wine. That is clearly nonsense. What we did was quote a job description sent to our buyer by a headhunter on behalf of a large supermarket chain which did not mention the word wine' once.'

The original Virgin email read: A big UK supermarket is advertising for a wine buyer right now: wine is not mentioned in the job description; sales, profit and KPIs are mentioned 12 times; our favourite line is "work between quantum profit and margins, buying and commercial gross to close the deal and achieve Key Performance Indicators".'

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