Food Unwrapped Channel 4

[tenbeech]

Did anyone see this programme on Channel 4 last Monday ? ( 8th October ) Discussing British & English wine , Aparantly there is a difference.
They visited a Spanish grape concentrate factory , probably making the stuff we buy to make wine. There were a lot of interstering facts about winemaking ,one which amazed me was that the British Government take £ 2.41 from every bottle of wine sold in the U.K. in excise duty and VAT.
Thats something to think about when drinking homemade wine , £12 46 tax saved on a 5 litre D J

 

[PD]

Yes at least Dick Turpin had the courtesy to wear a mask.....

 

[graysalchemy]

And £12.46 less to be spent on the NHS, schools, armed forces, police, fire service and the elderly.















But also £12.46 less for Mr Osbourne to give in tax relief to his high earning chums. :whistle: :whistle:

 

[stevie1556]

I didn't see the program but I did read an article in the paper about duty on wines. The price you said is for a £5 bottle of wine, but for an £8 bottle of wine the duty rate is less so you get more wine for your money if that makes sense. This was comparing 2 wines with the same ABV.

I thought the duty rate would've been the same across all wines with the same ABV.

 

[Moley]

This programme is available on Four On Demand and the wine article starts around 12mins 40. Unfortunately, I had to watch 13 adverts and one trailer before I got there and there doesn't seem to be any way to skip them.

It doesn't actually tell you much either, apart from explaining the definitions that English Wine is from grapes grown, pressed, fermented and bottled in England whereas British Wine is made from grapes grown, pressed and concentrated mostly in Spain, shipped here, watered down again, fermented and bottled in Britain.

So the few English resident forum members who grow their own vines make English Wine, but any of us in the UK can buy grape juice concentrate and make British Wine.

Apparently, the snippet with a home winemaker pouring concentrate into an FV and adding yeast took 7 crew 9 hours to film. They recorded considerably more but it all got cut. The bloke in question is Fermenting Tom, one of the mainstays of the Harris forum, and he wasn't impressed with the programme either.


Picking up on Stevie's post, surely the duty paid on an £8 bottle of wine will be exactly the same as that paid on a £3 bottle of wine of the same ABV but you're paying a few pounds for the wine itself rather than a few pence, the proportion of the purchase price going to "the cursed horse-leeches of the Excise" * is significantly smaller.



* Robert Burns, "Scotch Drink"