Darling Goes over the Top
June 7th 2008, by Gavin
By our man in the trenches
Times are tough for the UK wine trade. The pound has slumped against the euro, the cost of wine at source and fuel prices have shot up, and consumers face the credit crunch.
If that wasn’t enough, the anti-alcohol lobby is winning the media battle, with middle-class binge-drinkers being portrayed as a drain on the nation’s resources. So the same government that brought in 24-hour drinking (for health reasons?) softened the way for the assault on responsible wine lovers.
Britain now boasts the highest rate of duty on wine in Europe. The Chancellor of the Exchequer slapped a record 14p on a bottle of wine in the Spring budget and pledged to increase duty above the rate of inflation over the next four years.
Duty on a bottle of wine is now nearly £1.50, plus VAT on the duty as well as the wine, while there is no duty at all in Italy, Spain, Portugal, Austria and Germany, while France fleeces its citoyens for all of 2p a bottle. And yet we manage to remain sober – well, most of the time.
Captain Darling even claimed that wine drinkers are better off under this Government: ”Alchohol has become more affordable. In 1997, the average bottle of wine bought in a supermarket was £4.45 in today’s prices. If you go into a supermarket today, the average bottle of wine will cost about £4.00.”
Perhaps, but what he didn’t say was that the government has trousered 37p more per bottle in duty in that time, before the new rate came into being. Producers have been forced to cut costs, and two thirds of wine sold in Britain today is on ‘special offer’.
50% tax on an average bottle
On a £4.20 bottle on sale in the UK, which is the average price paid for a bottle of wine, £2.10 goes on duty and VAT, then there’s shipping, storage and distribution, plus the agent and the retailer’s margin. After the bottle, cork, capsule, label and packaging (we spend 50p on all these) that leaves rod all for the wine inside the bottle.
The Best Wine List in the World?
May 29th 2008, by Gavin
And a steal for €600 a bottle
When I was a young man growing up in London, my friends used to squirm in trepidation when I had my hands on the wine list in a restaurant. Their fears were justified: to paraphrase George Best, I spent most of my earnings as a 25 year-old computer salesman on fine wine, football and a fast car – the rest I wasted.
Those happy, yuppy days are gone but some things – and men, I suppose – don’t change. So it was a real joy to be back in the toy shop yesterday when I was presented with the greatest wine list I have ever seen. And this wasn’t in Bordeaux, or Paris, or even in London, but in Girona, 100kms north of Barcelona in northern Spain and a short drive from the French border. (I drove the 500 kms from Bordeaux in our Toyota Previa, so something’s had to give.)
I was lucky enough to be invited to this celebration dinner at El Celler de Can Roca by a group of old friends from England, Belgium and Holland, and even more fortunate that (a) I wasn’t paying and (b) was given instructions to order only the best. The same group, minus me unfortunately, had eaten at El Bulli the night before and had ordered only Spanish wines, so their preference this time was for reds from Bordeaux.