Buckfast Easter egg expected to sell thousands

An off-licence is set to make a fast buck has been flooded with orders for its tonic wine-themed Easter eggs.
Buckfast Easter egg packageBuckfast Easter egg package
Buckfast Easter egg package

More than 2,000 orders came within 24 hours of adverts going out for a special Buckfast Easter egg package.

The package includes a 140g chocolate egg with a miniature 5cl Buckfast bottle as well as a Buckfast-branded pen, lighter and magnet.

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Enterprising off-licence owner Derek Brennan said he has 20,000 eggs to sell and will ship all over Britain from his business D-Bees, in Lurgan, Co Armagh.

Mr Brennan, who has promoted novel "Bucky" products in the past, said the idea grew out of the shop's "massively successful" Christmas and Valentine's hampers.

The Easter egg package costs £9.99 and will start selling online from April 3.

Buckfast Tonic Wine has been made by Benedictine monks at Buckfast Abbey in Devon for almost 100 years and is particularly popular Scotland, both Northern and the Republic of Ireland, and parts of northern England.

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The quasi-legendary drink has an alcohol content of 15 per cent and the caffeine equivalent of about four coffees per 75cl bottle.

It is frequently linked to violence and anti-social behaviour and in Scotland has nicknames like "wreck the hoose juice" and "commotion lotion".

In 2015, the Scottish Prison Service found 43.4 per cent of inmates had consumed Buckfast before their last offence despite it accounting for less than 1 per cent of total alcohol sales nationally.