Glasgow facing Buckfast shortage

Shop owners in Glasgow are struggling to keep up with demand for tonic wine Buckfast and fear they will run out after production was halted due to Covid-19.

As reported by the Glasgow Times, cash and carries have stopped selling the tonic wine and shop owners are having to use their connections to secure bottles.

“It’s really bad. At the start in the cash and carry there was a limit on how many cases you could buy, but now they aren’t selling it anymore,” Whiteinch-based shop owner, Sobhan Rashid, told the Glasgow Times.

“Where my shop is there are lots of factories and warehouses and people get a half bottle on the way home – it’s what they like to drink. But there’s nothing we can do if the factory is shut,” Rashid added.

Some shop owners in Glasgow have been inflating their prices for the tonic wine due to increased demand.

“Some people knew the circumstances and stocked up and are charging stupid prices like £10 per bottle. People are benefitting out of bad news. We stocked up a bit but it will run out in a week or two. You need to know someone to get it.

“We sell it for £7.99, which is the recommended retail price, but because people know the circumstances they will put the prices up – it’s not their fault, if their stockists put the prices up they have to do the same,” Rashid told the paper.

Some Buckfast fans are venturing down south in order to get their hands on a bottle. Buckfast sales manager, Stewart Wilson, described the situation as “a nightmare”.

“We’re not completely out of stock but the problem is that because production line is closed there’s no facility to move that product about,” he told The Scottish Sun.

Buckfast has been produced by Benedictine monks based at Buckfast Abbey in Devon since in the 1920s.