Lidl woos middle-class shoppers with upmarket French wines

Bottles of upmarket French wine like Pomerol and St Emilion will soon be on the shelves next to 39 cent grapefruit and blow torches for €10 at Lidl.

In an attempt to woo middle-class shoppers, the discount retailer is launching a new range of premium French wines at its 140 stores in the Republic from September.

Customers will be able to buy Bordeaux classics like St Emilion from €14.99 to €39.99, Pomerols from €19.99 to €34.99 and Graves and Medocs from €14.99.

“The French wines will be an addition to the permanent range of wines from across the world which offer excellent value for money,” a spokeswoman said.

"Lidl Ireland will introduce a range of premium French wines to all 140 stores across the Republic of Ireland from September for a limited period."

Selling more expensive French wines marks a change in the retailer's traditional low-cost strategy and pits it against the likes of Marks & Spencer, Tesco and Supervalu, which recently subsumed the Superquinn brand.

The recent hikes in excise duty on wine - €1 in budget 2013 and 50 cents in budget 2014 -have negatively impacted the sales of discount brands.

Lidl and fellow German discount retailer Aldi now command a 17.1 per cent share of Republic's multi-billion euro grocery market

The latest figures from research group Kantar Worldpanel shows that Aldi's share of the market jumped by 22 per cent to 8 per cent in the 12 weeks to the end of April this year.

During the same period, Lidl’s share of the market rose by 12.2 per cent to 7.6 per cent.