Mid-winter may feel a little bleak right now but there are, we trust, some brighter days ahead.

We’ve been preparing the blends of our white and rosé 2024 for bottling next month and they’re both excellent, touch wood, albeit with lower yields all round.

The UK prices of our reds will have to go up from today, regrettably, as the new duty rates kick in after midnight tonight. We warned our customers earlier this week, so we’ve been busy with a flurry of orders.

There’s also been a big birthday in the family this week – where has the time gone? – but we’ve also placed a sad announcement in today’s Times. More on these below.

If you have any questions, suggestions or would like to get in touch, please email us both by clicking this link.

All the best

Gavin & Angela Quinney

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UK wine duty changes – what you need to know

From 1 February 2025, UK wine duty is changing and the temporary fixed rate (the so-called “easement”) is ending. This means:

• All wine is taxed on the level of alcohol on the label
• Wines at 12.5% ABV or more – higher duty. For example, a bottle with 14% ABV (Alcohol By Volume) sees duty rise by 43p + VAT (52p total), on top of the 53p increase 18 months ago.
• Duty on 12% ABV is the same, 11.5% goes down, but all other duty rates rise.
• Rule of thumb – duty on a 13.5% bottle is £3 plus VAT, +/- 11p for every 0.5%.
  (eg duty at 15% is £3.33 while 12% is £2.66, plus VAT.)
• On a £9 bottle at 13.5% ABV, 50% is UK tax (£3 duty and £1.50 VAT), leaving £4.50 for everything else.

66 duty bands for wines of 8.5% – 15% ABV replace just two

Here, above, is the actual table, using the new UK duty rate of £29.54 per litre of alcohol in any wine.

The revised system, introduced as a “Brexit benefit” by Sunak and Johnson and now endorsed by Reeves and Starmer, overlays the EU’s simple structure with 66 different duty rates for wines from 8.5% to 15% ABV and 70 more for fortified wines up to 22%.

‘We are taking advantage of leaving the EU to announce the most radical simplification of alcohol duties for over 140 years,’ boasted Sunak in his Budget speech, October 2021.

In other news, Starmer wrote a piece in The Times on 28 January entitled ‘We’ll cut the weeds of regulation and let growth bloom’.

Enough said. (For more thrilling graphics, see ‘Your guide to UK tax on wine’ on GQ or bauduc/news.)

The highest duty on wine in Europe

As a result, the UK now has the highest duty in Europe on wines of 13.5% ABV or more. A 13% ABV bottle is taxed at £2.87 – double the total duty in 20 EU countries combined (€1.69) and they include the Netherlands, Belgium and Poland.

A big birthday

Our eldest, Georgie, turned 30 on Wednesday, 29 January. It was lovely to have her at home for Christmas – this was us (missing Bugs) with a glass of our Crémant on New Year’s Eve, with her grandfather David.

Georgie’s a teacher at a state school in north London, so she deserved a little relaxation with Pavie the dog and Goose the cat.

She has always been the boss. They’ve all grown up a little since 2006 (right).

Georgie was four when we moved from London in 1999, and Sophie two. On the left is the 2001 Sauvignon harvest, with Bugs on Ange’s back, and Georgie checking up on the sorting of the grapes.

Georgie with her mum and brother Tom in the summer, plus Russo her dog and Pavie.

Tom is 21 so it was fun for a while to say that all our children were twentysomething. I go over to London to spend a few hours with Georgie fairly regularly, purely for family reasons of course.

Diana Quinney, 1933-2025

As many friends and family know, often via Instagram and Facebook, I would also go over to England to see my mother, especially as it had become too difficult for her to come and see us.

Today there’s an announcement we placed in The Times.

Here’s my Instagram post (@gavinquinney) from 20 January, which went onto my Facebook page as well. (A good friend thought it rather an unusual thing to put on Instagram but as I’d posted numerous photos of my visits to see DQ over the years, and of mum at Bauduc, it seemed fair enough.)

Some very sad news. My dear mother, Diana, had a bad fall in the dining room at her care home on Tuesday (14th January) in the early evening. My sister Rosanagh (Sannah) was called and went with Mum in the ambulance to A&E in Worcester. Mum had broken her hip, her arm and some ribs and she had banged her head.

At 91 and quite frail, she couldn’t have coped with an operation and she was fortunately allowed back to her care home in Evesham, Worcestershire, for ‘end of life care’, as they are properly staffed and equipped for it.

I caught a flight on Wednesday and made it to her care home before Mum was brought back from the hospital by ambulance. My sister Lucy drove down from the Lakes and joined us in mum’s room that evening.

The three of us barely left our mother’s side over the following days and nights, while she herself was unsurprisingly resilient. Sannah lives 15 minutes away and the care home also kindly freed up a room a few doors from Mum’s for us to rest in.

The staff at the care home were amazing. So too have been her close family, and Mum was surrounded by love with a dozen of us being with her over her last days – her three children, several grandchildren and partners (coming from Worcs, London, Scotland and Sweden) and Mum’s younger sister Gaenor and niece.

Hanging on to the end, but mercifully never conscious throughout, Mum died peacefully in the early hours of Saturday, 18 January, with Sannah, Lucy and me at her side. It was a privilege for the three of us to be with her.

I moved out of that spare room at Cavendish Park, the excellent care home, at noon on Saturday. As I’d been staying there since Wednesday afternoon I had to go before the residents might have thought I’d joined them. The photo (above, left) is from mid-November and I’m so glad I saw Mum there for a few days twice more before Christmas.

It’s been some solace to spend the weekend at Sannah’s & Dominic’s in the company of quite a few of Mum’s 27 direct descendants. She’ll be hugely missed but that in itself is quite a legacy. Mum’s funeral will be in Dumbleton on 12 February, if all goes to plan.

Many, many thanks to everyone for their kind messages of condolence, love and support. It means a great deal.

Left: the trip out to a good friend’s house for lunch in November, with some of her oldest friends whom she’d known for 70-80 years, turned out to be DQ’s last day out, sadly. Of those in the photo with her at Bauduc in 2020, on the right, nine of us make up a third of her 27 direct descendants. She will be greatly missed by all of us.

Onwards and upwards.