What is a good Vivino rating? We checked 2,941 UK supermarket wines
If you've ever stood in the wine aisle with your phone out, scanning labels with Vivino, you'll know the feeling. A 3.6. Is that good? A 3.9 for two quid more. Worth it?
Nobody tells you what the numbers mean in practice. So we worked it out.
We took every wine on the websites of Tesco, Sainsbury's, Waitrose, Asda, Morrisons, Ocado, Aldi and Lidl, and matched 2,941 of them to their Vivino page. Then we lined them up by price.
Almost everything is a 3.5 to 3.9
Here's the first thing that surprised us. Vivino scores run from 1 to 5, but in a supermarket you'll almost never see the ends of that scale. Nearly two thirds of the wines we matched (64%) sit between 3.5 and 3.9.
So a 3.6 isn't "fine, above average". It's the middle of the pack. And the gap between 3.6 and 3.9 is bigger than it looks.
What each price band gets you
This is the table we wish we'd had years ago. It shows the share of wines at each price that clear 3.8 and 4.0 on Vivino. Prices are per 75cl bottle, using the loyalty card price where there is one.
| Price | Wines | Average rating | 3.8 or higher | 4.0 or higher |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Under £6 | 241 | 3.33 | 7% | 2% |
| £6 to £8 | 556 | 3.58 | 17% | 4% |
| £8 to £10 | 629 | 3.64 | 29% | 8% |
| £10 to £12 | 387 | 3.74 | 47% | 19% |
| £12 to £15 | 386 | 3.76 | 52% | 17% |
| £15 to £20 | 305 | 3.84 | 71% | 31% |
| £20 to £30 | 216 | 3.94 | 87% | 52% |
| £30 to £50 | 138 | 4.04 | 96% | 70% |
| £50 to £100 | 71 | 4.19 | 100% | 94% |
A few things jump out.
Under £6 is a gamble you'll mostly lose. Only one wine in fifty gets to 4.0.
The step from £8–10 to £10–12 is the best value jump on the shelf. Your odds of a 4.0 more than double, from 8% to 19%, for about two pounds.
£12 to £15 isn't much better than £10 to £12. If you're spending £14, you're often paying for a label, not for a better wine.
Above £30, the score stops helping. Almost everything is 4.0 or more, so the number can't tell good from great. That's where tasting notes and taste come in. Below £15 is where Vivino earns its keep.
The number to look for
If you only remember one thing: under £15, look for 3.8 or higher.
That cuts out most of the shelf. At £8 to £10, it leaves you with roughly three wines in ten. Those are the ones that most people who've tried them think are better than average for the money.
A 4.0 under £10 is rare enough to be worth buying when you see one. Only 8% of wines in that band manage it.
The cheapest 4.2s we found
These are the cheapest wines in the whole dataset rated 4.2 or higher, with at least 100 ratings behind them:
- Salmon Run Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc, Waitrose, £7.00 (4.2 from 3,321 ratings)
- Forte Alto Dolomiti Red Blend, Waitrose, £8.50 (4.4 from 240 ratings)
- Terre di Faiano Primitivo Organic, Tesco, £9.25 with Clubcard (4.2 from 19,110 ratings)
- Santodeno Sangiovese Appassimento, Sainsbury's, £9.25 with Nectar (4.2 from 9,348 ratings)
- The Wanderer Malbec, Morrisons, £10.00 with More Card (4.2 from 4,169 ratings)
Salmon Run Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc£7.00 at Waitrose★ 4.2 on Vivino · 3,321 ratingsSee it at Waitrose
Terre Di Faiano Primitivo Organic Wine£9.25 with Clubcard at Tesco★ 4.2 on Vivino · 19,110 ratingsSee it at Tesco
Santodeno Sangiovese Appassimento£9.25 with Nectar at Sainsbury's★ 4.2 on Vivino · 9,348 ratingsSee it at Sainsbury's
The Wanderer Malbec£10.00 with More Card at Morrisons★ 4.2 on Vivino · 4,169 ratingsSee it at Morrisons
Notice the Italian reds. More on that in another post.
Three things the score won't tell you
How many people rated it. A 4.3 from 40 people means much less than a 4.0 from 40,000. Always check the count under the stars. We ignored anything with fewer than 25 ratings.
Which year you're holding. The headline score on Vivino is usually an average across every vintage of that wine. Most supermarket wines are made to taste the same each year, so this matters less than you'd think. For pricier bottles, it can matter a lot.
Whether you'll like it. Vivino's crowd is mostly casual drinkers, like you and me. Soft, ripe, easy reds tend to score well. If you like your wine sharp and lean, adjust accordingly.
How we did this
We collected every wine listed on eight UK supermarket websites on 11 and 12 November 2026, then matched each one to its Vivino page and checked the matches by hand where they looked odd. This post uses 2,941 matched 75cl wines with at least 25 Vivino ratings. We left out wines sold on Tesco's website by third-party sellers, because their prices aren't Tesco's (we wrote about that here). Prices change all the time, so treat them as a snapshot.
You can browse every wine, by shop and by score, on the main page.