It’s a common problem: you find a wine you love and then can’t find it anywhere. If you’ve failed to track down a wine in the past, this short article should help.

Firstly, there are a number of reasons why this might happen:

You tried the wine abroad and can’t find it now you’re back home
The UK (The Tasting Quarter’s home) is one of the largest importer of wines in the world. Yet despite the huge variety of wines available, there are many which are not imported, and thus not available in the UK at all.

You have the wine’s details but it doesn’t seem to exist
There are some ‘on-trade-only’ wine labels. These are wines which are exclusive to restaurants and bars, so you won’t find them in your standard wine shop at all.

You don’t have all the wine’s details
Wine merchants are often faced with lost-looking customers desperately searching the shelves for a wine with little to go on except a few hastily written notes or a vague recollection of what the label looks like. With the huge array of wines available in the marketplace it’s important to have as much information as possible.

So, how do you go about collecting the information you need?

Use the camera on your phone to take a photo of the label
(We also take images of the neck of the bottle if any useful information is there, and the back).

Use the wine-searcher app
www.wine-searcher.com is the Google of wine, which now has a sophisticated image recognition app. They have extensive listings from various wine merchants allowing you to compare prices (where multiple merchants are listing) and get a good deal. Do make sure you know what the full costs are when comparing these prices however (double check delivery, all taxes etc). You’ll also find it’s generally cheaper to buy full cases (normally containing 12 full bottles), rather than single bottles.

It’s great to find a wine you like, but try not to get stuck on it! There’s a whole world of wine out there for you to try!