Keep the Wine Duty cap
I recently wrote to my subscribers with an important message that impacts all UK Wine Lovers.
Over the past 5 years our industry has been badly impacted by a range of worldwide and domestic economic events including several rises in Customs & Excise duty that is imposed on every bottle of wine.
From February next year, the 'easement' or temporary fixed rate that has existed since August 2023, whereby all wines between 11.5% and 14.5% alcohol were taxed at a flat rate of £2.67 a bottle, will come to an end. (The £2.67 was already a 20% increase on the previous rate of £2.23.) Instead, it will be taxed on its percentage of alcohol.
The UK will go from having two or three duty bands to more than 30. Pricing and labelling wines will put enormous pressure on both producers and importers, particularly as alcohol levels vary significantly from year to year and region to region. We are all wondering how we are to manage such a bureaucratic, complex, administrative nightmare that will cost every single wine importer dearly - whether they are a huge investor-led company or a small family business like ours.
Wine reflects its region, its maker and its history, it is not merely an ABV
It is impossible to imagine that the only criteria for assessing how much tax should be paid on wine is on its alcohol content - and that a wine which last year may have been 13%, but this year, due to increased sunshine has risen to 13.5%, will be subject to huge increases. We are still talking about relatively small changes, when compared, for example, to the amount of alcohol in spirits.
If these new rules come in, It will inevitably favour mass produced and bulk wines that are produced as cheaply as possible, making it harder for us and our colleagues to work with smaller, family growers whose focus is quality over quantity.
It will unfavourably impact wines from warmer regions, where the sunshine means more sugar in the grapes and higher levels of alcohol in the wine. If you enjoy wines from Italy, the Langeudoc, the Rhone valley, Spain or Argentina - to name but a few - you can expect to pay a great deal more for your favourite wines.
One of the UK's most respected and knowledgeable wine writers, Tim Atkin MW, sent an email this week explaining the situation with great clarity, and I am sharing it here in the hope that it will help to explain why the cost of a bottle is set to rise even more.
He explains that it will leave us paying the highest wine taxes in Europe. When you buy a £9 bottle of wine at a pretty normal 13.5% alcohol, half of that will be UK tax. Not much left for the wine - when you take into account the cost of transportation, distribution, the cost of the bottle, the label and the labour.
We love what we do. We love our growers, our clients and our staff.
To find out more about the industry wide campaign to stick to a fairer system of Customs & Excise duty, and to keep your favourite wines affordable, please read Tim's email here.
Mary's Desert Island Wines
I love every single wine we import. I know and love all the growers and their families. Choosing just a few wines proved to be immensely difficult, but I finally settled on the following because of the memories they provide each time I take a sip. The Saint Nicolas de Bourgueil, for example was the red wine I had for my wedding, and my daughter had for hers. Wine memories are made of this...
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