Lidl, the German discount supermarket chain that operates more than 10,000 stores across Europe, is invading the United States as it gets set to open stores in Virginia, North Carolina and South Carolina next week.
Part of Germany’s Schwarz Group, it claims the title of the world’s fifth-largest retailer. It also buys and stocks a lot of wines–more than 100 of which earned medals at last week’s INDY International Wine Competition. Adam Lapierre, MW, is Lidl’s director of wine. He said he was “particularly excited that our Allini Prosecco DOCG has won Sparkling Wine of the Year–this is a great quality wine that we’ll be offering at a market-beating price.”
While we could not determine exactly how much wine Lidl buys annually, we did find a Guardian story from 2014 that estimated the more than 600 shops Lidl had in the UK at the time were taking 5 percent of all the wine that was available in Bordeaux.
Unlike Costco, it does not have house labels. Lidl has “buying teams in each major wine- producing country who work intimately with winery suppliers to develop ranges of the highest- quality wines at the lowest possible prices for our shoppers. Therefore, we don’t have one house label, but a wide array of exclusive wines from around the world,” Lapierre said.
Published: June 6, 2017
