A quick thread on something I didn’t think would be an issue due to Brexit, but now is. Jersey/Guernsey as we all know are British overseas territories technically. Whilst they are only 50 miles from the Mainland, but how are supplies going from the UK to them? Well again technically it’s an export to supply wine or anything else to the Channel Islands from the UK. Odd but that how it’s been for quite some time. Now you would think the UK government would never forget about the UK overseas territories. After all there British!

I don’t know if anyone else has noticed but all the Brexit types are getting all excited about a bit of news regarding services and the UK being 4th in the world. Whilst that’s lovely it equally demonstrates perfectly how these people just don’t get the bigger picture. The world and to a smaller degree, Europe, produces everything that in a modern world people want/need. It’s not possible for all countries to make/produce everything that everyone wants. This is fairly basic stuff so far.

Back in Jan 21 I got a lot of attention due to my tweets going viral. 3 years one I thought I would use the power of hindsight to see if my tweets were right and if #Brexit is the unmitigated catastrophe many in the remain camp said it would be. For Wine it’s nearly had the full #Brexit exposure being goods that attract huge amounts of revenue for the UK Government. We have the last transition in February ‘25 to look forward to when excise taxes become “unworkable”. But what actually happened so far.

Three years ago @RishiSunak, a tee-total chancellor at the time, came up with the notion that all alcoholic beverages are the same and are made in the same way. What he actually did is start something that will destroy the uk wine industry. Here is why. Many people will have never thought about how pretty much every they consume gets to that retail environment, nor should they, it’s not that exciting. However #Brexit was the game changer where continuing shortages have led people to question where products come from.

Should you be pleased that in the budget alcohol excise duty was frozen until February 2025? The answer is no and you should be deeply concerned what is planned for Feb 25. Here is why the tories have taken everyone for fools again. Firstly the duty increase of August 2023 was the largest increase in tax on all types of alc in 50 years. It was so large that it was responsible for inflation to rise in the wider economy.

This coming week is budget week. It’s time to see if the government really do listen to industry or if they have forgotten they are our servants. Time will tell but allow me to bring you up to speed with the unworkable alcohol proposal scheme. You may recall 2 years ago the government passed laws to change how excise tax (the money charged on Beers, Wines & Spirits) was calculated & charged. It was the brainchild of @RishiSunak who was chancellor at the time. This was the reaction in the press independent.co.uk/news/uk/politi…

This week marks the next transition in the #Brexit circus. Until now only excise goods were being verified at both EU and UK borders. This does make sense as alcohol and cigarettes are cash cows for the UK government. So what’s changing as of Thursday? On Thursday all goods will be required to have documentation checked by UK customs. This has been postponed many times since Jan 2020 because Dover and The Tunnel for example simply didn’t have the space to do the checks, which is why check zones were built.

People outside my industry have been asking why the strong reaction to the dead cat story of pint bottles. It’s not really about the pint bottles it’s about the continuous effects of government interference and Brexit. Brexit was in their own words “removing unwanted red tape and having seamless trade on a global basis” sounds great and something many voted for (on an advisory basis you understand).

Ok folks I am being asked about this and so like me cut to the chase, it’s absolute bollocks. Why people can’t use their brain is beyond me. Let’s take a step back and think about the supply side.

https://twitter.com/haggis_uk/status/1739915699298963958

Currently winery’s around the globe all use 75cl bottles, yes every single wine producing nation on the planet is running with 75cl bottles, that’s literally billions of bottles. Even the UK!

Here is a little bit of Xmas Brexit bollocks for all the Gammon loving Tories. The government has managed to screw the wine importers of the UK again. It’s like they don’t want you to drink wine made from filthy grapes grown abroad! There latest bit of fuckwittery as follows As of January 1st 2024 all wine arriving on the market must support the company name of whoever brought it to the UK market. If it’s made in the UK /bottled in the UK it must show who made the product & where it was bottled . So far so good. Thats covers 0.09% of wine in the UK.

Following on from my thread earlier in the week & the fact the headline is bollocks, I then had a webinar with our trade body to understand the full details of this new legislation. I must say I was surprised that further barriers to trade are being imposed. So more UK red tape. Just as a recap the headline is clear the UKIP Tories claim they have reduced EU red due to Brexit for my industry. This is a lie. The facts are clear Brexit has caused and continues to cause new UK born red tape or ad the industry calls them Barriers to Trade.

So the Tories have posted this frankly pathetic advertisement. So here are the facts and why what they are claiming is utter bollocks, but it’s fair to say the ukip Tory party has form for making shit up. In fact there pretty good and making stuff up. Here is what the Tories have changed in terms of wine production, importation and exportation since June 23rd 2016.

This past week has proven to me just how desperate & pathetic the UK government has got. The Excise duty increase and the way it is charged came into force on Tuesday at midnight. It’s been a challenging week if you import, and government has been lying at every opportunity. I warned over two years ago when the new system was proposed that it was unworkable, @GavinQuinney put the most fabulous factual data thread together 3 weeks ago with all the stats you could wish for on how costs were increasing.

Why the new trade deal with CPTPP shows us all that Brexit was about tax Evasion, racism, and outside influences. Cast your mind back to the advisory referendum. The result never included the UK Eu voters all 1.1m of them. But that OK it’s was an advisory referendum, non binding yet the government continually referred to it as the “ will of the people” in reality it’s the will of 1/3 of the UK voting public globally, and the other 2/3 can shut up, very democratic.

Why is this every day bottle of wine about to cost a lot more? One reason and it’s down to taxation. Today this wine would cost you on average £8.99. For an organic Syrah it’s a very good deal. However come August 1st that will change. @RishiSunak wants you to pay even more tax on wine. So excise duty for wine with an ABV of 13% is going up from £2.23 per bot to £2.68 per bot.

I was chatting to friends last night in Montpellier and the have told me about the worst effect of Brexit thus far. I am only posting this so that Brexit types know what they have done to some families. Before the referendum a guy from South Wales moved to Toulouse to become a healthcare worker. He met his partner and over the years had a couple of kids. Never married. His partner was from South East Asia.

Let me take you on a journey from 2016 to 2023. This wine remains one of my favourite wines in our entire range. It’s from North Western Spain and it Albariño. But how much has its price changed over the past 7 years. Well quite a bit… The label and bottle have remained the same over the last seven vintages, the price from the producers has also remained the same from 2016-2022, its just this year the price increased due to a shorter than normal crop. The increase was 0.50€ on the bottle from the winery.

Just a little recap on DRS Scotland. So far we have pretty much all small and medium Wine importers refusing to sign up to DRS, and many large importers have also not joined the scheme. Then a few weeks ago the UK Government pretty much said the scheme breaks the IMA and this was swiftly followed by the WTO also saying the same, if implemented it would be illegal.

So with combined efforts of both London and Edinburgh governments sales of wine is going to get a lot more expensive in the second half of 2023 (from August) Here is an example of how it will increase and that is actually government fuelling inflation. This is one of our best selling wines and frankly if you haven’t tried it please do. It currently retails for circa £11-£12 all over the UK.

It’s really striking in both France and Spain that you have to work quite hard to spend over 10€ on a bottle of wine. Quite the opposite in the UK. Such a shame UK consumers are totally beholden to governments defrauding them on every glass. Just for the record Wine in the UK is now the most popular alcoholic drink. This has been the case for some years now. So it’s not a middle or upper class beverage, it’s just wine and everyone across all of society like it.

So here is how the Tories have twisted the alcohol reform proposal and made not just unworkable but now very expensive. You may recall they boasted about how they were going to bring down Sparkling excise duty from £2.86 per bottle to still duty levels currently £2,23 per bottle. Yesterdays budget revealed the next twist of the knife. What they are actually doing is increasing still wine duty to £2.67 per bottle and matching sparkling wine at this price. So in actual fact that’s a massive increase for the consumer.