Wines online

Cantina Tollo Rocca Ventosa Sangiovese Colline Teatine 2008. Photo / Steven McNicholl

There's nothing more frustrating than thinking you've bagged the ultimate bargain only to walk into another store and see it there at a fraction of the price. However, if you're shopping around for the best deals on wine, help is just a mouse-click away, through wine comparison websites, such as the Kiwi-based wine-searcher.com, now one of the world's most visited wine websites.

As on other price comparison sites, you type in the wine you're looking for, either in this country or further afield. Its free version taps into wines stocked by its not insubstantial selection of sponsors, who you then contact directly. Paying a relatively modest subscription fee will give you access to its entire catalogue of more than 3 million wines stocked by a staggering 16,000 wine retailers across the world.

The site can certainly help save a dollar or two when purchasing wine for everyday drinking, with lower priced wines logged in to its database. However, it really comes into its own when you're after more expensive bottles.

Looking up Bordeaux First Growth, Chateau Lafite - the most searched-for name by users in the United States, Britain, France and Asia - the site revealed more than $300 worth of difference between the lowest and highest price.

It's also useful for tracking down wines, from something you've been inspired to buy after trying it in a restaurant, to sourcing wines for birth years or to stock the cellar of the collector. It can also be used to work out what your wine collection may be worth and see what would be worth selling.

Wine-Searcher was the brainchild of New Zealander Martin Brown who founded the site back in 1999 while working in Britain in the IT department of that country's oldest wine merchants, Berry Brothers and Rudd.

"They used to have a yearly review of their competitors' price lists, when the marketing department would sit around a big table, each person with a different company's prices, and they would work through the Berry Brothers and Rudd list, noting down the other prices as they went," he explains. "I felt I could save the wine trade a lot of time."

Although it's still widely used by the trade, consumers now make up the majority of the 10.6 million visitors that used the site last year. It's also helped bring greater transparency to the world's wine market and made life more difficult for rip-off merchants.

In a world where the majority of wine websites seem to last as long as an open bottle of wine, the achievements of Wine-Searcher are impressive. "There weren't any other sites that were doing this when I started," recalls Brown, who relocated the business to Auckland a few years back. "Four or five other teams did build similar sites shortly afterwards, but they all went bankrupt during the first internet downturn."

Brown puts some of Wine-Searcher's success down to his background in wine and the goodwill that was generated within the industry by the fact that as the site wasn't actually selling wine so consequently wasn't competing with any existing players.

"I'm pleased with its success," says Brown. "I never thought that the site would be the most used website about wine, beating important players like the Wine Spectator, Wine.com, eRobertParker or would take 25 people to keep it running!"

This Kiwi ingenuity has certainly paid off and should help ensure wine drinkers need never pay over the odds for their bottles again!

Worth searching out

Cantina Tollo Rocca Ventosa Sangiovese Colline Teatine 2008
$13.90

A sassy sangiovese from Italy's Abruzzo with surprisingly rich dark berry fruit at this paltry price. It's succulent, spicy and earthy and will work wonders washing down a hunk of barbecued meat.
(From Scenic Cellars.)

Couper's Shed Hawkes Bay Pinot Gris 2009
$19.95

This rather sumptuous new shed on the block from Pernod Ricard NZ has already scooped the Air New Zealand Pinot Gris Trophy for this richly textured wine, which oozes exotic spice, smoke, baked pear and stone fruit.
(From specialist wine retailers such as Glengarry.)

Clayfork Vineyard Waihopai Ridge Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc 2009
$26-$28

From the same stable as Catalina Sounds' Air New Zealand Trophy winning sauvignon, comes this crisp and classy customer similarly made by up-and-coming young winemaker Nina Stocker. Silky textured and citrusy, with notes of blackcurrant leaf and dill leading to a slaty mineral finish, it's a Kiwi label to look out for from Australia's Endeavour Vineyards, which also owns the McLaren Vale's RockBare and Adelaide Hills' Alta.
(Direct from the winery (03) 579 6148.)