Wine tax rises 'clobber' my business, says vineyard owner

Barry Lewis said his business had been "clobbered" by the tax rises

A council leader and wine grower has criticised new government changes to alcohol duty.

Barry Lewis, Conservative leader of Derbyshire County Council, said the changes had "clobbered" his business.

Mr Lewis, of Amber Valley Vineyards, at Wessington, near Alfreton, said a dispensation given to smaller producers would not apply to most in the UK.

The government said the new regime would support "wider UK tax and public health objectives".

It said it had been made possible by the UK's departure from the EU.

Under what the Treasury says are new "common-sense" principles, tax is being levied according to a drink's strength.

Duty will increase overall, with most wines and spirits seeing rises, but will fall on lower-alcohol drinks and most sparkling wine.

Tax on a typical bottle of still wine with alcohol by volume (ABV) of 12% will go up by 44p, but on wine with 15% ABV, tax will rise by 98p, according to the Wine and Spirits Trade Association (WSTA).

Mr Lewis said his vines were planted 11 years ago and had been producing "significantly" since 2018

Posting on Twitter, Mr Lewis said the tax rises would have a particular impact on small UK still wine producers like his business, since they tended to produce relatively small amounts of sparkling wine, which has a decreased duty rate.

And he said a small producer dispensation could not be utilised by most UK vineyards since it only applied to wine with an ABV of 8.5%, and most UK wines started at 10%.

He told the BBC he had "very little choice" but to increase his prices by about 23%, adding at least £1 per bottle to the cost of most wines and £2 or £3 to some.

"We've absorbed the costs, the inflationary pressures, of the last few years as a business and there comes a point at which it's very difficult to do that," he said.

"We'll have to sell harder. People still come out to visit us and support us as a local business, and I hope they'll continue to do that, but we're already seeing where people might have bought five or six bottles of wine in the past, they maybe buy three or four, and this might mean it goes down to two or three."

Mr Lewis said he did not feel the tax rises were a party-political matter, and would be inevitable whichever party was in power.

"I am a Conservative - and I wear my heart on my sleeve in that regard - and I'm much more of a low-tax Conservative than a taxation Conservative," he said.

"If I were in the Chancellor's shoes, would I have done something different? I'd probably... have taken a more holistic look at the duty regimes that affect small wine producers based here in the UK. I think some details have been missed in this reform of the duty system."