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2023 wine duty changes in the UK & what they mean

2023 – 2025 WINE DUTY CHANGES & WHAT THEY MEAN This blogpost will be updated shortly due to changes in UK duty rates applicable from 1st February 2025 but you can see the new rates in the table below. If you have been burying your head in the sand recently you may have missed an upcoming important deadline for wine-drinkers – 31st July 2023 – after which, despite much lobbying by the drinks industry and despite the government’s stated desire to control inflation, higher rates of duty will be applied to most still wines. THE 2023 CHANGES IN DUTY ON WINE IN THE UK From 1st August 2023 it is estimated that 90% of still wine will see duty rise by at least 9% from its current level of duty – £2.23 per bottle. Duty on a fairly average 13% ABV bottle of wine will increase by 20% to £2.67 and for still wine with 15% ABV the rise in duty will be a whopping 44% to £3.21 per bottle (these rates exclude VAT which applies to the duty charged as well as to the wine itself). Fortified wines like port at 20% ABV will attract a duty increase of £1.30 per bottle to £4.28 and the highest increase of £1.73 will apply to a fortified wine with 22% ABV. This compares with extra duty of 82p on a bottle of 37.5% ABV vodka. See table below for some examples of increases – and decreases in duty from 1st August 2023: Duty per bottle pre 1st Aug 2023 Duty per bottle 1st Aug 2023 – 31st Jan 2025 Duty per bottle from 1st Feb 2025 Percentage increase since 31st July 2023 Still wine 11% ABV £2.23 £2.35 £2.43 9.0% Still wine 11.5% ABV £2.23 £2.67 £2.54 13.9% Still wine 13% ABV £2.23 £2.67 £2.88 29.1% Still wine 14.5% ABV £2.23 £2.67 £3.21 43.9% Still wine 15.1% ABV £2.97 £3.22 £3.34 12.5% Sparkling wine 11% ABV £2.86 £2.67 £2.43 -15.0% Sparkling wine 11.5% ABV £2.86 £2.67 £2.54 -11.2% Sparkling wine 13% ABV £2.86 £2.67 £2.88 0.7% Sparkling wine 14.5% ABV £2.86 £2.67 £3.21 12.2% Sherry 16% ABV £2.98 £3.42 £3.54 18.8% Port 20% ABV £2.98 £4.28 £4.43 48.7% N.B. Transition rates apply to all wines between 11.5% and 14.5% until 1st February. Figures above do not include VAT which applies to duty WHY THE DUTY CHANGES WILL NOT MAKE THE SYSTEM SIMPLER I have written elsewhere about the unfairness of taxation on wine compared to other alcoholic beverages so will not reiterate those thoughts in this blogpost apart from to write that when the government has frozen duty rates on alcohol, there is evidence that revenue from wine duty in the UK grows – and, to be fair, duty rates have been frozen since the Autumn Budget of 2020. Conversely wine duty receipts usually fall after an increase in the rate of duty on wine and so it seems strange that the Chancellor has now decided to increase duty at this moment in time – and in this way. One of the stated aims of the government’s Alcohol Duty Reforms is to simplify the current system – the broad idea being to tax alcohol depending upon its alcoholic strength which does not seem unreasonable. But, after a number of hours spent calculating the new rates and comparing them to current rates, the system does not feel simpler at all. There is the added complication of some Transition Rates which will apply to all wines between 11.5% and 14.5% ABV until 31st January 2025, after which some rates will increase and some will decrease – although this assumes that the actual rates do not rise in line with inflation which unfortunately is another of the Government’s stated aims. All in all the detail of the system is going be cumbersome for wine businesses to manage – and costly. The Wines & Spirit Trade Association estimate £250m extra costs to the industry to handle the changes. Alcohol levels in wine vary according to the vintage – warmer weather usually means more of the sugar in grapes converts to alcohol – and so the duty rate is expected to change for most wines every year. Every wine retailer therefore needs to be prepared to adjust prices for every wine every year. The increases in duty generally will be hard for customers to stomach especially in the current economic climate, never mind the extra costs of administration that are no doubt going to have an impact on the general cost of wine for the consumer. Currently the system for duty charges can be described fairly succinctly: – £2.23 per bottle for most still wines, certainly all those between 5.6% ABV and 15% – £2.86 per bottle for most sparkling wines, certainly all those between 8.5% and 15% – £2.98 per bottle for all wines between 15.1% and 22% ABV which includes most sherries and port wines Of course there are exceptions to these three bands but they correspond to the vast majority of wines sold in the UK. Under the new regime with alcohol taxed according to its strength and increasing for every 0.1% ABV, there will effectively be many more bands. THE WINES THAT WILL SEE LOWER DUTY RATES The seemingly good news is that there will be decreases in some rates of duty. From 1st August 2023 the following will see a decrease in the rate of duty payable: – any wine between 1.3% ABV and 3.6% ABV – any wine between 4.10% and 5% ABV -any still wine between 5.6% and 10% ABV – any sparkling wine between 5.6% and 14.5% ABV Not exactly easy to follow. Apart from a few quirks in the system (wines between 5.1 and 5.5% ABV seeing higher rates for example), you can see the logic. The government is trying to encourage better health by lowering rates on lower alcohol wines. However, whether intentional or not, they are penalising those who don’t favour sparkling wines and off-dry white

Online shopping for wine by Wines With Attitude

7 tips for buying wine online

Misc., Wine Prices

7 tips for buying wine online We read frequent reports about how e-commerce in the UK is growing and that includes a trend amongst time-pressed wine lovers towards buying wine online. But there are some things to be aware of when looking at wine e-commerce and I don’t mean in this instance the large scale wine investment scams – I will write about wine fraud at a later date. I’m writing here about little tactics that wine retailers use online – and sometimes in store – to persuade you to buy their wines. I see these “tricks” used over and over again as I research wines for my website and look into the competition and they make my blood boil. At best, these practices are deceitful and dishonest. So if you are buying wine online make sure you follow the steps below. COMPARE APPLES WITH APPLES – OR CHABLIS PREMIER CRU WITH CHABLIS PREMIER CRU I don’t know why but some people seem to delight in telling me that they have found one of my wines cheaper somewhere else. Let’s set aside the fact that I don’t aim and can’t afford to be the cheapest in the market given that Wines With Attitude is a small but niche company that prides itself on its excellent customer service rather than on bargain basement prices (read the testimonials to see what customers think). What I usually find when I follow up on these claims is that the wines are simply not the same wines at all. Recently my Reyneke Reserve Cabernet Sauvignon was on a price comparison site with Reyneke Reserve Red; they are both red wines, both made by the fabulous South African producer, Reyneke, but completely different wines produced in different ways from different grapes and as a result in different price brackets. One region that can cause a lot of confusion in this respect is Burgundy. All Burgundy white wines are 100% Chardonnay but they can vary in quality depending for example whether they are “basic” Burgundy, village wines or single vineyard premier cru wines and depending on the producer (read my blog on Burgundy for more detail). In terms of the producer, there is confusion because of the way that the Burgundian vineyards have been split up over time under the Napoleonic Code and so you may find more than one producer of what looks like the same wine as it is from the same wider vineyard e.g. Chablis Premier Cru Les Vaillons is a vineyard split into different parcels owned by different producers. Some names are just confusing and, in this instance, I don’t think there is always an intention to confuse the wine consumer. For example I have seen Eperosa’s Stonegarden Grenache (out of stock) on sale outside the UK as Eperosa Stonegarden but there is also an Eperosa Stonegarden Shiraz. Stonegarden is the name of a single vineyard but the vineyard contains Grenache and Shiraz (and Mataro or Malbec) but the two wines mentioned are very different. These are just a few examples – rule 1 is to make sure you know exactly what it is you are buying. Of course all the detail about the wine should be explained in the description of the product. READ THE WINE TASTING NOTES – IF THERE ARE ANY & PERHAPS WITH A PINCH OF SALT Many wine retailers – and I mean MANY – simply put the wine producer’s wine tasting notes on their website or shelf. Nothing wrong with that perhaps but very often they are not labelled as the producer’s description and to be very honest some of them are a bit wishy washy and vague, others frankly quite weird. Here’s an example of a wine description from a fairly well-known brand, see what you think… “The ‘I’m so famous that there are children named after me’ wine. The wine that has the perfect mix of tropical fruit and spicy oak flavours that had the country in a frenzy longer than it takes to find the perfect LBD.” Some retailers pinch their wine descriptions from other merchants – I have had this happen to me several times. I was told by one of these retailers that I should be flattered; however they are profiting from my hard work and it can take a long time to put the tasting notes together. Grrr! And perhaps worst of all are the wine merchants who don’t include any description of the wine – now I will admit that sometimes my wine tasting notes are a little late to the website and sometimes my descriptions can be a bit wordy but since you can’t taste or smell the wine before buying it I figure that I should try to describe it as best I can. But really, no description at all?? Sadly I see this on a lot of wine websites. CHECK YOUR DATES Make sure the wine on sale is from the vintage that you are looking for because for most decent wines from most wine-producing regions there will be vintage variation. This is why I don’t automatically stock the next vintage of my wines but only add them if I have checked them out first to make sure they are as good as or better than the previous year. Not all wine companies do this. Worse though are the websites that don’t tell you the vintage at all, though fortunately they are few and far between. CHECK THE NUMBERS i.e. make sure that any validations of the wine are valid. I see this ruse too frequently. Putting a 95+ Parker Point rating or a Platinum medal from X or Y competition into a wine description can help sell wine. But sometimes when you dig deeper, you find out that the 95+ rating or platinum medal was for a previous vintage of the wine and the current vintage being sold was awarded “only” 89 points and a bronze medal. I see this practice used by a few winemakers

Protest against increases in wine duty from Wines With Attitude

7 reasons why wine duty should be cut

Wine Prices

7 reasons why wine duty should be cut DUTY ON WINE: A WINE MERCHANT’S VIEW It’s the time of year when the wine industry in the UK awaits with bated breath the decision of the Chancellor on alcohol duty; in fact in 2022 it’s not the first budget this autumn and after the recent turmoil in the markets and with the signs that we are entering into a recession, the outlook is not great. In his short time as Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng said he would maintain the freeze on alcohol duty but Jeremy Hunt scrapped that decision. Will he or won’t he raise duty on wine again in the Budget, and perhaps more pertinently, if so, by how much? As a reminder alcohol duty is, according to HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) “a tax that is charged on alcohol produced or processed in the UK or brought into the UK for consumption.” You may not notice increases in duty directly as this tax is paid by your retailer when the wine leaves a bonded or customs-controlled warehouse to go onto their shop shelves or to be sent directly to their customers; it is incorporated into the price that you pay. And we all know how wine prices, like everything else, have been rising recently. Duty on wine is charged at different rates according to the type of wine and according to alcoholic strength which means that currently £2.23 of the price of a bottle of still wine between 5.5% ABV and 15% ABV is duty. This excise duty is in addition to value added tax (VAT) and in fact excise duty itself incurs 20% VAT making it £2.68 including VAT. And the excise duty rate – £2.23 or £2.86 on a bottle of sparkling wine – is regardless of whether the bottle of wine has cost you £5 or £50. This by the way is one of the reasons why the starting price of my wines with attitude is around £15. For a £5 bottle of wine, £3 or 61% is made up of duty and VAT whereas ‘only’ 31.5% of a £15 bottle of wine goes to the government. But don’t get me started on the subject of cheap wine, let’s get back to the Budget and the likelihood of an increase in duty on wine. The UK government’s policy paper on duty on alcohol states that all alcohol duty will rise by the Retail Price Index every year. This means that this next Budget the wine industry could see the Chancellor raising those rates of duty by about 12.6% (Sept 22’s RPI rate) to £2.51 for still wine and £3.22 for a bottle of sparkling wine, ignoring VAT. Gulp! You might think that a rise in line with inflation is fair – there is a huge deficit to sort out after all – however there are a number of things to bear in mind… 1. We already pay rates of duty that are way higher than most EU countries. Although we are no longer in the EU, a comparison with 27 other countries is worth making. The level of excise duty payable on wine is set locally in each EU country; the EU just sets a “harmonised minimum rate” of alcohol duty for wine. That harmonised minimum rate for still and sparkling wine however is… €0, yes €0. So each country is free to choose what it charges and many countries choose not to charge any duty at all on wine (though the EU is reviewing its current practices). In the chart below produced from 2018 rates per hectolitre (in Euros according to the European Commission Excise Duty tables) you can see that 14 of the then 28 EU members did not charge excise duty on wine; in 2020 it was 15 of 27. Some of those that do charge excise duty only apply the charge to sparkling wine. If we compare the UK with EU countries, the UK pays one of the highest rates, the third highest rate after Ireland and Finland. The top 4 countries including the UK paid over €100 more per hectolitre than each of the rest of the excise duty paying countries; in the UK in 2018 we paid about £1.10 more in duty per bottle of still wine than Lithuania and about £2.42 more per bottle than France. Duty on wine in the UK rose by an average of almost 6% p.a between 1987 and 2021 whereas the annual rate of inflation averaged 3.3% over the same period. It doesn’t seem quite fair somehow does it? 2008 was the worst year for wine lovers – the rate of duty rose 9% in March and then 8% in December. 12.6% seems a lot to stomach in one go. 2. To make matters worse the value of the pound declined by almost 21% over the same 35-year period. Events like Brexit, Covid-19 and the war in Ukraine have all contributed to sterling’s recent acute devaluation with the rising costs of holidays abroad and of imported goods being felt by all. 3. At the same time that excise rates escalated and we receive fewer Euros or US dollars for our pounds, inflation has been rising and most recently at an alarming rate so we have a triple whammy. 4. Health is cited as one of the main reasons for the high rates of tax on alcohol and there is no denying that it makes sense to support the health services required for alcohol-related illnesses. Whilst much is made about high levels of duty being a much-needed means to reduce alcohol consumption in the UK, there is as much evidence to suggest that the two are not directly linked as there is evidence to the contrary. Nor do health concerns explain why increases in duty on wine seem to be excessive when compared with rises in the rates applicable to beer and spirits. Organisations lobbying for increased rates of duty on alcohol

Vintage-champagne-for-celebrations-from-Wines-With-Attitude

Vintage Champagne: Is it worth the price?

Wine Prices, Wine Styles

VINTAGE CHAMPAGNE; IS IT WORTH THE PRICE? Vintage champagne is often talked about in much revered terms and the prices it can sell for suggest a far superior product to non-vintage champagne but is vintage champagne so much better than non-vintage? This blogpost looks into what exactly vintage champagne is, how vintage champagne differs from non-vintage champagne and what vintage champagne tends to taste like in comparison to non-vintage. In addition we look into the best vintage champagne years, how long vintage champagne can keep, how best to appreciate vintage champagne and whether it is worth the premium. First let’s look at non-vintage and vintage champagnes and the differences between the two. NON-VINTAGE CHAMPAGNE Non-vintage champagne is produced year on year in a consistent house style and, to achieve that consistent style, champagne houses have to use a blend of wines produced from grapes from different vineyards picked in different years, often many different years, and usually, though not always from all three of the authorised champagne grapes – Chardonnay, Pinot Noir and Pinot Meunier. Reserve wine is kept back each year to use in the non-vintage blend (or cuvée) and accounts for about 20% of the total blend. It is a real skill producing that consistency of style that non-vintage champagne tends to have given the differences each year in grape quality and weather and taking into account the effects of ageing on the reserve wines. So, if you find a non-vintage champagne that you really like, I always recommend that you stick to that brand because you can be pretty sure that the taste and quality will stay the same. In my case de Castellane non-vintage Brut Champagne (above) has been my favourite for many years and remains so which is why it was the first wine that I wanted in the Wines With Attitude portfolio. VINTAGE CHAMPAGNE Vintage champagne is not produced every year but only when the producer deems the vintage to be worthy – it is usually about three or four times each decade. Some champagne houses only produce vintage champagne, Dom Perignon for example, which means that they don’t produce champagne every year, adding to the rarity value – and to the price. All the grapes used to produce a vintage champagne must be from the year’s harvest specified on the front label of the bottle. No reserve wines from other years can be added. They are generally still blends however as the winemaker mixes the juice from different grapes and from grapes from different plots with different terroirs but instead of looking for a consistent style, they are trying to achieve the best tasting champagne from the best grapes grown in the specific conditions of that vintage. Each vintage champagne will therefore taste different; even a specific champagne house’s vintage champagne will taste different each year it is produced. There are some who think that, even in vintage years, the priority for most champagne houses has to be the non-vintage champagne as that is what they sell most of; it has to be hoped that using the better grapes for the vintage champagne does not compromise the known style of the non-vintage champagne but there are some who believe that it does. HOW & WHY VINTAGE CHAMPAGNE TASTES DIFFERENT Non-vintage champagnes must mature in bottle for a minimum of 15 months of which 12 months must be on the lees (mainly a deposit of yeasts which forms after the second fermentation in the bottle has finished, as seen in the photo). Vintage champagne spends longer ageing, at least three years. In practice it is often much longer before any wines are released – two to three years for non-vintage and four to ten years for vintage. The additional ageing time means that vintage champagne develops more body, more complex flavours and a smoother texture. In younger non-vintage champagne the primary flavours will be fruit – citrus fruits like lemon and grapefruit and stone fruits like peach and apricot. In non-vintage champagne that has aged a while a buttery or creamy texture and secondary flavours like brioche/ toast and nuts may start to develop. These secondary flavours will be more intense in vintage champagne because of the longer ageing; in addition the body will be fuller, the wine richer and further earthy flavours and aromas like leather and mushrooms may be present. HOW LONG VINTAGE CHAMPAGNE CAN KEEP Vintage champagne is likely to age better and for longer. Non-vintage champagne should generally be drunk within 36-48 months of bottling (remember it has already aged at least 12 months in bottle before release) whereas non-vintage champagne can be kept for five to ten years or longer (after its minimum three years ageing in bottle). THE BEST VINTAGE CHAMPAGNE YEARS Of course it is all a matter of taste but generally the following years are considered to be the very best vintages of the 2000s – 2018, 2012, 2008 and 2002. HOW TO ENJOY VINTAGE CHAMPAGNE I would recommend serving vintage a little less chilled than non-vintage champagne say at 12-14°C so that the complex flavours of the wine are not masked. Also allow the champagne to breathe for 15-30 minutes so that the layers of unique aromas and flavours have time to unfold. Sit back and enjoy! IS VINTAGE CHAMPAGNE WORTH THE PREMIUM? Vintage champagne is generally currently priced at around £40-£60 but can be hundreds of pounds per bottle; the fact that vintage champagne represents only 5% of total champagne production and the longer ageing time account to some extent for the difference in price. But at the end of the day, you are taking a bit of a chance; although the winemaker is trying to impress with a wine made from the best fruits from the best years, it really is all a matter of taste. Whether you think a wine is worth the premium, depends on the particular vintage and the particular wine and your own preferences. I recall one blind tasting of

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