Moët prices lead restaurants to boycott agencies

Importers have reacted angrily to plans to put up the trade price of Moët & Chandon and Vranken-Pommery Monopole by 5% next year. Small and medium-sized agencies, which cannot compete with supermarket deals, including Moët at just over £14, claimed they were effectively subsidising such deep discounts.

Giles Cooke MW, buying and marketing director at Alliance Wine, said it was cheaper for restaurants to buy from their local cash and carry or supermarket and a price rise would be "scandalous" in the economic circumstances.
"Moët has told us it's not open to negotiation," he said. "For companies like us which are not buying container quantities there are no separate deals - we have to either buy on the grey market or buy off the list. For players of our size it's really the final straw."

Ted Sandbach, managing director of the Oxford Wine Company, said: "I think it's absolutely crazy - particularly as Moët is so deeply discounted. It makes it difficult for a regional to want to stock it, particularly if you can get it cheaper by the case from a supermarket."
Andrew Hawes, chairman of the UK Champagne Agents' Association, said: "There is a strong case for brands to consider increasing prices in 2010, and this is because almost none of the major brands passed through anything like the full impact of the depreciation of sterling versus the euro in their pricing at the beginning of 2009."

Both Moët & Chandon UK and Vranken-Pommery Monopole said they could not comment on pricing strategies for individual trade members.

• Sommeliers