Middle England’s burgeoning love affair with fine wine is helping two of Britain’s biggest wine sellers to see off the recession and competition from supermarkets.

Well-to-do Britons’ growing taste for expensive plonk helped Majestic Wine to recover from declining sales to cash-strapped businesses. Oddbins, meanwhile, said that its performance had improved since it dispensed with cheap branded wines.

Both retailers hope that a focus on quality rather than quantity will help them to avoid the fate of First Quench Retailing, the owner of Threshers, which collapsed into administration last month.

Fine wine sales rose 14 per cent in the first six months of the financial year at Majestic, which trades from 153 wine warehouses, largely in affluent towns and suburbs. The company has dedicated fine wine sections in 40 per cent of its stores, with plans to add more despite the recession.

Steve Lewis, the chief executive, said: “People are treating themselves. It isn’t customers buying exclusively fine wine — they’re getting their two or three bottles of fine wine as a treat.”

He added that the travails of the restaurant industry had provided an opportunity to lure new customers. “If you eat at a decent restaurant and you don’t want to drink the house wine, it’s probably £25. Spend that at Majestic and you’re getting a really classy wine — and people are eating at home and entertaining at home more.”

Spending by business customers has fallen by 6.9 per cent. “Every finance director in the country just put a red line through corporate entertainment,” Mr Lewis said.

However, the gastropub and small restaurant sector has been improving: “Small, owner-operated restaurants and gastropubs, often run by husband-wife teams, are focused on value for money and as a result they’re switching to New World wines, where we’re very strong.”

Majestic has changed its minimum purchase from 12 bottles to six, which it says has attracted more supermarket customers — a reversal of the long-running trend for off-licences to suffer at the hands of their cheaper rivals. Mr Lewis said a key weapon in Majestic’s fight against the supermarkets was its staff: it handpicks graduates and tries to instill a passion for wine.

Majestic shares closed 9p up at 254p. It held its interim dividend at 2.8p after reporting a rise in first-half pre-tax profit from £5.6 million to £6.1 million, on revenue of £107 million.

Oddbins, the loss-making offlicence chain, believes that it will be bolstered by the collapse of Threshers, as it tries to carve out an upmarket niche. Oddbins itself was salvaged from administration by Simon Baile, whose father had built up the business during the 1960s and 1970s.

Mr Baile, now managing director, said that like-for-like sales at its 132 stores were down by 2.5 per cent. It is on course for a loss, on the level of earnings before interest and depreciation, of £1.5 million in its first full year since its collapse, down from £6.5 million in 2008 and £10.5 million in 2007.

Mr Baile believes that under its previous owner, the French group Castel, which owns the Nicolas chain, Oddbins was drawn into a dogfight with supermarkets at the lower end of the market. “The more the Baile family gets back into the business, the more I see the potential. It’s enormous.”

Rumours that Oddbins had hit trouble circulated in the industry this year, prompting Mr Baile and Henry Young, his chairman, to write to suppliers to say that “Oddbins is very much still alive and kicking”. The company has expressed an interest in buying some of the Threshers estate, but is unlikely to buy much.

Adding some sparkle

Changing tastes

It’s official: liqueurs are so last year and cocktails are simply declassé. If you want to be in with the in crowd this year, then prosecco is what you should be drinking.

Both Oddbins and Majestic Wine tipped the Italian sparkling wine as the new aperitif of choice for middle-class Britain. Sparkling wine is replacing more traditional aperitifs, such as cocktails and liqueurs.

“A bottle of sparkling wine is a very social thing and the British public has a love affair with champagne,” Steve Lewis, the chief executive of Majestic, said. “I think we’re seeing a long-term move away from [traditional] aperitifs.”

Simon Baile, the managing director of Oddbins, said: “I think prosecco and sparkling wine will be huge this Christmas.” Oddbins yesterday started putting its sparkling wines on promotion for the Christmas period.

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