Making your own wine is a great pastime on many levels....
Firstly, it's very cheap and the taxman doesn't get to surreptitiously steal a huge chunk of your hard-earned readies. How big is the chunk ? Read on...
Just think of the 'Three for £10' wine offer at ASDA that's been running for years; that's a bottle of wine for £3.33. Now this wine has been made in Chile, California, Australia, South Africa or wherever. Grapes have been planted, lovingly tended, harvested and pressed, the liquid collected, filtered and then fermented, cleared, put in a glass bottle, sealed, labelled and despatched half-way round the world and it's still only £3.33.
However, consider that sum even further. The UK excise duty payable on any standard 75cl bottle of wine of that strength is £1.90* – yes, a staggering amount on any bottle of wine but a very high proportion of £3.33. To add insult to injury, the £3.33 selling price also includes UK VAT (sales tax) at 20%, on the whole amount including the £1.90 duty, i.e. there's a tax upon a tax, and therefore the exchequer has just grabbed a further £0.56.
So of the £10 you handed over at the ASDA checkout for your three bottles, £7.38 has immediately been snaffled by the government.
(* UK Duty rates from 26 March 2012 on still wine of 5.5% to 15% ABV = £253.39 per 100 litres)
The bottle of wine has therefore gone through all the stages described above, plus being distributed to the supermarkets, for only 87p. In the supply chain everyone, the makers, shippers, distributors and the supermarkets has made a profit from just that 87p.
