Wine Suppliers Sales Ploy Exposed.  Add/Read Comments

A Matthew Clark employee has anonymously released a damaging email from the Managing Director that exposes a dodgy company instruction - go to one of the bars we supply and buy our wine on expenses. Staff were told to drink Nottage Hill in JD Wetherspoons by the UK supplier in an attempt to secure an £80 million contract. While not exactly an illegal operation it is not exactly playing fair...

Times Online
"At £6.99 a bottle the total cost to the company would have been £16,776. But that was a tiny sum in comparison with the £80 million contract that Matthew Clark’s parent company, Constellation Europe, was hoping to win. The trouble began because Constellation was determined to win the exclusive right to supply wine to all J D Wetherspoon’s 650 pubs. This year the pub chain decided to hand the £80 million wine contract to one supplier and, to find out which would prove the most popular, it began a trial that is due to end on July 31. "