So over the past three days some journalists made up a story about pint sized champagne bottles. Not wine journalists (they actually tell the truth and do a fantastic job so the public can be educated), no your regular mainstream journalists.
Now why is this remotely important? It’s important because it’s so irrelevant. These journalists didn’t have anything to put in their papers so decided to create a story which is utter bollocks. Now they know most people know very little about wine.
So on that basis you can write whatever you like & most people will believe it because it’s in the paper. Problem is if there doing that on something that doesn’t really matter you have to ask the question. What bollocks are they making up on the important shit that does matter?
There is the problem right there in black and white, that you can no longer trust MSM with facts when you know full well that they are making the news up. Who ever came up with this BS pint size champagne bottles story has right royally fucked up.
If you like fake news about booze then try @FakeBooze. Not only are their stories better, and the writers have talent unlike the pricks who wrote the champagne stories over the past three days.
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We are now twelve months in with Brexit and some media outlets have been in contact to see if everything is as bad I said it would be. Here is my final thread on the reality of Brexit after 12 months and what’s coming in 2022. 1/19
Since Brexit started excise goods (Alcohol, Cigarettes, other taxed goods) have been subject to the full Brexit regulations and checks that 95% of all other goods have not had to worry about in 2021. 2/19
Therefore the wine industry is very aware of the problems that everyone else will face in just 8 days from now. Moreover it’s why we are nearly fully stocked going into January but had to start that process back in October. 3/19
This week saw the tories announcement of major changes to the way alcohol taxation system will work from Feb ‘23. At first the hype created by the treasury’s PR department was like they has reinvented the wheel. What they had actually done was pull a major con on the public. 1/14
The proposal to reduce and remove sparkling wine super tax will cost the U.K. £119m PA approximately, however the new still wine taxes will yield an extra £4.5BN. But the system from an importation point of view will not be workable. 2/14
Currently their are three main tax codes for duty on wine, 411,413 & 415. These are the bands from 8.5% to 22% and sparkling wine in its own band. Most still wine is tax at £2.23 per 75cl bottle and £2.86 for sparkling. Above 15% still is £2.96. 3/14
Right now I have seen the duty changes it’s clear this not good news. Most still wines especially new world range at 13% to 15%. So in effect these will not only be more difficult to declare but certainly more expensive with at least 50p on a bottle before vat.
The for fizz these mostly come down but again your find that most fizz is around 12.5%. So the reduction here is considerably less that the increase on Still wines.
Now when you look at actually sales of all wine still out sells fizz around 4 to 1. I am sure someone will quote the exact difference. So in actual fact the wine trade has just seen a massive increase across the board on what people actually consume.
Last week I put out, to a host of transportation companies, a tender to collect a container of wine from Austria. I need the stock be here in early November. One of them said they and I quote” the earliest we can get that back will be January”.
This would normal be a case of order week one delivery week two especially with full loads. What has actually happen with full loads and groupage is that this major mover of wine is taking an extra week each month. So now they work on order week one delivery week 10.
I have found a different transportation company that can do the job but it’s costing £500 more than it would have done 10 months ago. That’s a mixture of #Brexit, Covid and HGV shortages. My advice is buy what you want for xmas now as we have another Brexit road crash coming.
Despite progress & a few noticeable changes in wines laws such as Vi1 & now labelling as of yesterday, the elephant in the room is the ridiculous proposals of Organic wine importer certification & storage. @VictoriaPrentis do I really need to ask @CPJElmore meet with you?
Just so you understand @VictoriaPrentis, like Vi1 and Back labelling which were both unnecessary, so is an Organic Wine Importer certification. Moreover when your required to store organic wine separately from regular wine you really do have to question who wrote this nonsense.
Even more ridiculous is that fact that retailers don’t have to be registered into any system for organic wine retail. So @VictoriaPrentis I really think you should be looking at this urgently before you get another industry wide letter advising just how much this is not wanted.
As we enter August the #Brexit effect is now showing, in my industry at least, the permanent issues that we have to deal with. Here is my updated thread for my business in the wine industry. 1/25
It’s fair to say that Brexit has delivered very few positive outcomes to the wine trade, needless to say there are many more negatives which we now manage to the best of our abilities. 2/25
On the positive side, the end of the grey market and overseas online retailer has effectively ceased in U.K. because taxes and shipping has made the practice unsustainable verses regular U.K. retailers. 3/25