When I wrote an obituary for Oddbins in April 2011, I was only half right.
That Oddbins - the one that had been struggling for a decade under French ownership and then a group of private investors - did die. I remember the pitiful shelves of the previous Christmas as a growing number of suppliers refused to extend any more credit. A few months later the chain collapsed under a pile of debt, causing hundreds of job losses.
The massive power of the supermarkets and their pricing strategies were blamed for removing any place in the market for off-licence chains such as Oddbins. Yet the name lives on under new management, and the new Oddbins appears to be thriving. In its slimmed-down form it may have vanished from swathes of the UK, but it retains a good presence in London and Scotland, with fours shops in Glasgow, three in Edinburgh and two in Aberdeen.
In its old guise, Oddbins shook up the wine trade when it was owned by Seagram in the 1980s. It introduced Chile and "invented Australia", according to Richard Meadows, the boss of Great Grog and a former Oddbins manager, yet I prefer the new iteration. In place of all that New World novelty there is a wealth of interesting European wines and craft beers. There's also a good stash of gins and whiskies.
"We're spoilt for choice in what we can offer our customers," Ana Sapungiu, the chain's wine buyer, told me. "We can be a little bit different and a little less mainstream." Her decision to back Portugusee wines proved spot-on, with sales still growing 20 per cent. She went on to push Greek and then German wines - never an easy sell, as she admits, "but we kind of like a challenge".
Tasting a couple of dozen Oddbins wines recently, there were plenty I'd recommend, including a ripe citrus blanc de noir - pinot noir made without its skins like a white (Koehler, £12.50) - a spicy, tobacco-scented Argentine malbec (Pora Py'a, £7.75) and a gutsy, Rhone-meets-Bordeaux blend from the Lebanon (Chateau Ksara, £11.50). Out of all the Portuguese wines, I would pick the rich, full-bodied Portal Da Aguia (£8.50).
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