A change in the way alcohol is taxed means wine prices are going to creep up

At the start of this month, the new wine duty was fully implemented by our current government, having been introduced by the previous one. Cheers, guys. But what, exactly, has happened, and how have things now changed?

In August 2023, Rishi Sunak’s government introduced a revised alcohol duty in line with the retail price index (essentially a measure of inflation). While the system this replaced calculated wine duty by volume (with three different rates for still, sparkling and fortified wines), the new duty is calculated via a drink’s alcohol by volume. And because wine can now be labelled to within the closest 0.1% ABV, those three rates have now been replaced by well over 100 different ones.