By: Joanna Marchong, investigations campaign manager
The government and public health zealots have conspired to do the unthinkable, dilute our wine. Yes, one of the nation’s most cherished tipples is under threat, not from foreign invaders or bad vintages but from a confusing cocktail of tax policies and health interventions. It all started with a push by many producers to reduce the alcohol by volume (ABV) in certain wines in a bid to lower duty rates, nudged along by the last government’s decision to tie tax rates for wine to alcohol content. On the surface, this might sound like a win for consumers—lower alcohol, lower prices, less guilt. But dig a little deeper, and it’s clear that this misguided policy is going to leave us paying more for wines that are worse in quality and higher in sugar.
Back in 2020, the Treasury decided to upend the tax regime for wine, introducing a convoluted system where duty increases by half a per cent for every half-degree of alcohol between 8.5 per cent and 11.5 cent. Starting in February 2025, this bureaucratic busybodying will extend to wines between 11.5 per cent and 14.5 per cent. What used to be a simpler tax (the same rate for all still bottles of wine and all sparkling bottles) has now become a regulatory nightmare. According to Rishi Sunak, they were advised by the usual suspects, health lobbyists and Treasury bean counters, ever eager to cash in on their puritanical crusade against alcohol.
What they’ve overlooked, of course, is that wine is a natural product. It doesn’t fit neatly into pre-packaged tax brackets. One year, a vineyard’s grapes might produce a wine with 12.5 per cent ABV; the following year, it could come in at 13 per cent. Nature does what it will. The new tax system, however, punishes this variability, forcing producers and importers into an administrative bind, calculating duty rates down to the decimal point. The inevitable outcome? More paperwork, more bureaucracy, and more costs passed on to consumers.
Lowering the alcohol content in wine is much easier said than done. To reduce the ABV, wineries will have to use reverse osmosis, where the wine is essentially spun to remove alcohol. In doing so, you also strip the wine of its body, flavour, and character, the very essence of what makes wine, wine. Replacing all of this is grape juice. Yes, you read that right: sugar. So, while you might be patting yourself on the back for choosing a low-alcohol option, you're actually getting a sugary concoction that’s anything but.
Such bitter irony that what started as a health initiative to reduce alcohol consumption is now flooding supermarket shelves with bottles that are higher in sugar. Of course, sugar comes with its own set of health risks, diabetes, obesity, tooth decay, none of which seem to have registered with the public health warriors who pushed for this change.
This misguided interference doesn’t just stop at the individual bottle level. Wineries and importers, forced to comply with increasingly complex regulations, will likely start narrowing their range. Why go through the headache of stocking a wine at 12.5 per cent ABV when a 10.5 per cent bottle will incur far less in tax? Grocery aisles will be stocked with an increasingly homogenised range of wines that offer little excitement and even less flavour.
Anyone who enjoys exploring the rich variety of wines that the world has to offer, this is a disaster in the making. Instead of sipping a bold Argentinian Malbec or a minerally Chablis, we might soon be stuck with a watered-down selection of sugary, insipid wines that offer none of the joy or complexity of the real thing.
At its core, wine is about more than just alcohol. It’s about tradition, history, and the expression of the land from which it comes. Each bottle tells a story of climate, soil, and craftsmanship. By forcing producers into this bureaucratic straitjacket, the government is not just meddling with the tax system, they’re meddling with the integrity of wine itself.
For the health lobby, of course, none of this matters. They see wine as just another vice to be regulated out of existence. But for the rest of us, for those who enjoy a glass or two with dinner, who appreciate the subtleties of a good vintage, who value choice and quality, this latest policy is yet another example of the nanny state going too far. It’s yet another instance of the government believing it knows better than we do. And it’s a giant middle finger to the English wine industry, which is rapidly establishing itself as one of the most innovative and interesting in the world, despite facing a taxation and regulatory system far more onerous than many of its competitors, as TPA research has recently pointed out.
If the government really wants to help consumers, it should focus on simplifying the tax system rather than piling on ever-more confusing regulations. Wine, like any natural product, varies from year to year. It shouldn’t be punished for that. And consumers shouldn’t be punished either, with higher prices, fewer choices, and sugary, manipulated bottles masquerading as a “healthier” alternative.