More 11% Alcohol Wines – Why?

Have you noticed more wines coming in at 11% or less ABV? If you have, then you might be wondering why.

The government (previous) has slowly been making an absolute mess of alcohol duty (taxation). There used to be one bracket of taxation that covered all wines between 8.5% to 14.5%, so just about all wines. There is now a breakpoint at 11%, so at that abv the duty is £2.35. From 11.5% to 14.5% is now £2.67

That doesn’t sound like much difference. But when there is a constant pressure from hospitality, for the lowest price for the first wine on the list, then the industry has to respond. Some of our suppliers have done a great job of tweeking some existing white wines that were already close to 11% and maintaining excellent quality and flavour.

Next February the whole duty system is set to massively complicated unless our new government sees sense and puts a stop to it. The scheduled changes would see an insane number of breakpoints, with a 14.5% abv wine’s duty being £3.10 on every bottle.

There is another problem here. The supermarkets swallow most of the wine sales in the UK, and they want cheap, it’s always about cheap, and it’s always about them dictating to the suppliers. Quality is a secondary consideration, so expect to see more and more low abv in the supermarkets. If you want lower abv but still want quality, it will be the independents to go for.