London, Oct 24 A Brit teenage boy is said to have been banned from buying wine gums, as a shop he bought them from classified the sweets as alcohol.

Jaz Bhogal, 15, had purchased the sweets at a 99p Store branch but was then called back to the discount shop and warned he needed to be aged 18 to buy the packet.

The male checkout assistant ordered the schoolboy to hand back the Haribo sweets and he was given a 99p refund at the shop, managed by Nikki Parker, in Wisbech, Cambridgeshire.

Jaz, from nearby Leverington, who was out shopping with a friend, was left dumbstruck.

"I couldn't believe it!" the Daily Express quoted him as saying.

"He asked me how old I was and, when I said I was 15, he said he couldn't sell me the sweets.

"He said they had wine in them and pointed to the word wine on the packet. I was absolutely speechless," he revealed.

Even his mother Sue Bhogal, 36, was puzzled by the whole incident.

"I thought Jaz was joking with me when he came home and told me what had happened," she said.

"It is ridiculous and I would have been really cross if I had asked him to buy them for me," she stated.

Red-faced store chiefs have now promised Jaz a voucher to spend in the shop as compensation - as long as he buys a packet of wine gums.

Bosses are investigating how wine gums were classed by the shop's till system as a banned item for under-18s but suspect it could have been mistakenly entered into software on the machines when the store was opened.

"Because the Wisbech store opened fairly recently there seems to have been a very unfortunate glitch. We have rectified this and are sure it will not happen again at any of our UK stores," Graham Barnes, spokesman for 99p Stores, said.

"To show that we have a good sense of humour we would like to offer Jaz a nine-item voucher to spend in the store on condition that at least one of these products is wine gums," he added. (ANI)