Ever since we first went to La Poste and sent our Gazette newsletter to friends and family, we’ve sold and delivered our wine direct to people at home in the UK.
As Victoria Moore wrote in The Telegraph about Bauduc “sales come from a broad base but the control is good for the producer and the sense of being involved in a thriving small agricultural business is rewarding for all.”
That’s true, and it’s also good to know that a larger chunk of your money is spent on the wine itself. So here are some numbers.
Below is a rough breakdown of where the money goes on a bottle of wine in the UK, using a comparison of bottles between £8 and £30 from independent wine shops. It shows you get a lot more wine for your money when you trade up - you can argue the toss over some of the costs and the margins but the principle remains.
UK duty went up on 1 August 2023 to £2.67 for all wines between 11.5% and 14.5% vol until 1 February 2025. (After which anything above 12.5% vol will go up by 10p for each 0.5% on top.) There's 20% VAT on the wine AND the duty.
So the tax element on cheaper bottles in the UK is huge: there's 61% tax in a £6 bottle in a supermarket and on a bottle selling for £8 exactly half is UK tax (£2.67 duty and £1.33 VAT), leaving just £4 for the retailer, distributor, the shipping, bottling, packaging, the winery, the liquid inside and the poor farmer.
Note that the UK sales margins for wine merchants are not simply ’profit’: they have to cover the cost of staff, sales, marketing, premises, rates, logistics and all operating costs for a retailer and, in many cases, those of an agent or distributor supplying them as well.
Our ‘classic’ range is sold in shops for around £15 a bottle, such as at Rick Stein’s in Cornwall. Obviously it costs a lot more in his restaurants.
Meanwhile, here's how our direct-to-consumer model looks, with a tiny UK margin and higher delivery costs for, say, 12 bottles. We store the wine in London City Bond, just like many UK wine merchants.
As it costs us less per bottle with larger home deliveries, here's how the breakdown on our classic wines looks - and our customers save money too.
Here's the same for our Premium wines:
When you buy direct from us, you can be sure that a much higher percentage of your money is spent on the wine. It's then up to us to make sure it's good, in the vague hope that you'll come back for more.