Category Archives: Ramblings and Rants

The Budget – UK duty on wine

November 27 2025

As there was no mention of alcohol duties by the Chancellor of the Exchequer in her Budget speech, this is a doom Thursday briefing rather than a Black Friday sales pitch.

It’s hardly headline news – and barely gets a mention elsewhere – but UK duty on wine is set to rise again by the RPI of 3.66% on 1 February. Now that doesn’t sound a lot – about 9-12p plus VAT on a bottle of wine – but this should be seen in the context of the recent hikes and absurd levels of admin, courtesy of the Conservatives’ new wine duty system and not helped by a new Labour government which endorsed the policy and added further costs.

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Duty changes and some personal news

January 31 2025

Mid-winter may feel a little bleak right now but there are, we trust, some brighter days ahead.

We’ve been preparing the blends of our white and rosé 2024 for bottling next month and they’re both excellent, touch wood, albeit with lower yields all round.

The UK prices of our reds will have to go up from today, regrettably, as the new duty rates kick in after midnight tonight. We warned our customers earlier this week, so we’ve been busy with a flurry of orders.

There’s also been a big birthday in the family this week – where has the time gone? – but we’ve also placed a sad announcement in today’s Times. More on these below.

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Your guide to UK tax on wine

November 30 2024

Sandwiched in between the joys of Black Friday and Advent Sunday, we bring you glad tidings with a festive guide to the changes in UK duty which will kick in at the end of Dry January. You may want to adjust your wine purchases accordingly in the run up to Christmas to avoid a bleak mid winter soon after, and beyond.

There has been some confusion about how wine is going to be taxed and by how much, so here is a handy portfolio of tables, graphics and photos.

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Labour’s scary Autumn Budget for wine

October 31 2024

Ah, the Autumn Budget, and a new dawn? A 1p reduction in the duty on a pint of draught beer? Hooray! No doubt the pubs are getting the Bonfire Night bunting out.

A horror show fit for Halloween, more like, for the UK wine trade and their customers. You’d never grasp that from the analysis of the Budget in today’s papers, however. Below is my table of where we were last year with UK duty on wine, where we are now with the so-called ‘easement’ for most wines today, and where we’re headed. The future for many is not looking too bright.

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Sunak’s wine legacy

June 29 2024

“So today, we are taking advantage of leaving the EU to announce the most radical simplification of alcohol duties for over 140 years.” Rishi Sunak’s Budget speech as Chancellor, October 2021.

Well, judging by his duty bands for 1 February 2025, that’s far from a ‘simplification’ and most wine drinkers in the UK wouldn’t say it’s ‘taking advantage of leaving the EU’.

Our newsletter at the end of June last year was ‘A guide to UK duty hikes on wine’ and below is an update. A 53p increase in duty per bottle for most wine (44p plus VAT) to £2.67 plus VAT last August was bad enough, but there’s trouble ahead.

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November review and photo journal

November 30 2023

Not that we habitually write our end-of-month newsletter at the last minute – good Lord, no – but we’ve been blending the 2023 whites and rosés this morning. And really good they are too (even if we would say that). We haven’t mixed all the wines from the stainless steel vats together en masse just yet but we have checked what fits together – with the help of an assortment of large test tubes and one of Bordeaux’s finest consultant enologists or oenologues (as in someone who knows what they’re doing). We’ll be bottling those wines here in February and there’s much to prepare before then.

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A guide to UK duty hikes on wine

June 30 2023

An increase of 53p a bottle might not seem much to some but with 50% of an £8 bottle of wine soon to be UK tax, it’s worth considering how much is spent on a bottle. And perhaps, more than ever, ‘drink less but better’ might be the message.

I’ve tried to make it easier to grasp with a fancy graphic of typically-priced bottles, above, and roughly where the money goes at each price point when you buy from larger retailers. And, in a separate picture, in restaurants.

There’s also an in-depth look at the data behind the duty on wine. I hope it’s of interest and, aside from perhaps sharing in our frustration, I’d like to think you’ll be better informed to make smart decisions when it comes to buying and enjoying the stuff.

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Reply to the Government’s alcohol duty review

January 25 2022

Replies to the Government’s consultation document on its new alcohol duty system have to be in by 11.45pm on 30 January 2022.

So our January news review comes a little earlier than usual to give you the thrilling opportunity to email your MP before the deadline, should you wish. We have felt pretty strongly about unreasonable levels of wine duty in the UK in the past but these current proposals have really sent us into a spin, along with many others in the wine trade.

Without beating about the bush, here’s a draft of what you might want to write to your MP. (Links to reach your MP below.) Update 26 Jan – we have slightly cut down the suggested letter from the email we sent here to the one below. Don’t forget to include your address to show you live in the MP’s constituency.

This explains where we’re coming from, but do copy and paste and edit accordingly. Below this explanatory letter is a stash of facts, figures and fancy graphics which you may be interested in, or can at least refer to if you want to know more.

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The Budget: prices on most still wines to rise in 2023

October 28 2021

First the good news from Rishi Sunak’s ‘new age of optimism‘ Budget. The higher UK duty rate on sparkling wine will be removed and the tax rate will be the same for sparkling and still wines from February 2023. Instead it will be based on the level of alcohol, with the current duty rate of £2.23 plus VAT applying for wines of 11.5% vol. Duty is frozen for the moment but don’t be fooled by this.

While staying with family in Worcestershire, here’s a snapshot (above) of what the new duty rates will look like for still wines from Feb ’23 if the proposals go ahead. There are two bottles of Bauduc and four others I bought from Waitrose – in all, three whites and three reds.

The German Riesling at 12% alc/vol will cost 12p more in tax, the 13% Bauduc Sauvignon 35p more, while our Bordeaux red, the French Cabernet Franc red from Saumur, and the South African Chardonnay, a whopping 47p a bottle more (13.5%). The Argentinian Malbec at 14.5% will cost an extra 70p in duty.

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To be or not to be… essential

March 31 2020

Should we deliver wine to customers at home in the UK? We think so, or at least for now.

There have certainly been some mixed messages from the UK trade. We were fairly shocked when the CEO of The Wine Society, Britain’s highly respected home delivery specialist, took “the decision to stop taking new orders and to stop making deliveries with immediate effect” hours after PM Boris Johnson’s ‘stay at home’ speech on 23 March, on account of staff safety. It was in the middle of one of their busiest periods.

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