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Buyer’s Spotlight: The Battles to Come

The government’s new duty scheme is here and this one is going to have a big impact, particularly on wine. Prices are going up substantially on nearly all quality wines, and the category is going to become more polarised between high-intervention, made-to-order supermarket brands that hit the right price points, and those wines that remain unmanipulated but increasingly unaffordable for most people.

It has been a painful process for the wine trade. The temptation now is to turn away from the duty trauma and focus on just about anything else. Buyers and their colleagues undoubtedly deserve some time away from their spreadsheets, but it would be a mistake not to build on the momentum that has been generated by the WSTA-led campaign.

• Read more: Queena Wong of Curious Vines 

Today, World Health Organization (WHO) lobbyists want legislators to do everything in their power to stigmatise and shame those who enjoy drinking wine, beer or spirits. They are campaigning for health warnings on labels, restriction of supply and a ban on alcohol advertising. Punitive taxes are just the foundation on which their future campaigns are built.

All of this is plainly stated in a WHO report from 2023 called the WHO Technical Manual on Alcohol Tax Policy and Administration (who.int/publications/i/item/9789240082793), which is required reading for everyone in the drinks industry.

There can be zero doubt that for the WHO, alcohol is the new tobacco. As is often the case with fundamentalists and totalitarians, they refuse to see a difference between a bottle of estate-grown Barolo and a pack of Marlboro Reds. Alcohol is alcohol, and that’s that. The “risk starts with the first drop”, claims the WHO.

Although it has been encouraging to see trade professionals coming together on the duty issue in a more unified way than before, the failure to influence two successive governments with differing priorities has unfortunately shown that the industry is ineffective at influencing national alcohol policy.

Given the WHO’s well-funded international strategy to, in their words, “denormalise” alcohol consumption by all available methods, the industry must use the momentum it has generated with the duty campaigns to prepare for and meet these challenges with strength. It needs to find a way to increase and focus its lobbying power, magnify its voice and unite its diverse elements so that independent merchants and hospitality businesses are properly represented. It needs to make itself much less ignorable.

The skirmish over taxation by abv has been lost, but the WHO’s war is only just beginning.

• wine
• WSTA
• trade
• price
• duty
• Wines
• campaign
• Jason Millar
• unaffordable
• supermarket brands