What drinks legislation would you change?

With producers, retailers, importers and hospitality all under pressure, the industry needs government to make life as easy as possible. Chris Losh canvassed opinion across the trade to find out what existing legislation they would change and why.

Chris Davis, channel controller, Les Grands Chais de France

“The UK’s current policy of taxing wine based on 0.5% ABV increments is creating unprecedented operational friction and commercial risk. It imposes an unsustainable administrative burden that damages customer relations, inflates overheads, and disadvantages the UK market globally.

“A bulk wine shipment may perfectly match its quality and flavour profile, but a nominal 0.5% variance triggers a cascade of bureaucratic updates. Managing my On Trade & Indie portfolio of over 1,000 wines makes it challenging to re-issue pricing and compliance documentation for every minor 0.5% shift.
While smaller retailers can sometimes absorb and pass on minor cost increases, for large-scale wholesalers a 0.5% change disrupts printed price lists, commercial contracts, and internal sales systems, straining our long-term partnerships.

“This duty structure adds an unnecessary layer of friction to an already complex supply chain. We supply 180+ countries and the UK is uniquely pedantic regarding these half-degree increments.
We urge a return to a simplified, banded duty easement structure, reintroducing a flat duty band (12.5%) for wines between 11.5% and 14.5%. This will allow the industry to focus on its core purpose: producing, distributing, and selling quality wine efficiently.”

Laura Willoughby, founder, Club Soda

“I’d change the descriptors for non-alc drinks to see 0.5% being called alcohol free. This would bring the UK into line with the EU, which approved a wine package last year saying that 0.5% can be called an alcohol-free wine, and to use ‘zero’ on your packaging, it has to be 0.05% and below.

“Changing the definitions will help the consumer. Currently, some people think that if they’re drinking 0.5%, they’re drinking alcohol, and therefore they’re not being sober. But they ingest many items in a day, including the orange juice in their fridge, that contain that level of alcohol.

“Aligning the alcohol-free definition with other parts of the world also means UK brands won’t have to change their labels if they export.

“I think it’s really important for the sector that 0.0% is not seen as the ‘real’ alcohol-free, because that would mean that nearly every product would need to be de-alcoholised, and would put the whole of the industry into the hands of larger businesses.

“It also penalises those that use natural methods to make drinks: a naturally-fermented beer,  or naturally-produced products like Mother Root or Botivo.  They should not be put under pressure to reformulate.”

Will Beckett, cofounder, Hawksmoor

“The number one issue the hospitality industry would like to see addressed is taxation, specifically VAT.  The UK restaurant sector pays the most tax of any in the economy: as much as 75% of pre-tax profit goes to the Treasury.

“Three charges do the damage: 20% VAT (against an EU average of 10–13%), employer NIC contributions and business rates.  The result is plain: 89,000 jobs have gone since the 2024 Budget, with venues cutting hours, raising prices, or closing for good.

“Of course great businesses are still profitable, but small family-owned pubs and restaurants (which make up about 80% of the industry) struggle massively. Tom Kerridge, amongst others, is spearheading a campaign at vatstheproblem.co.uk, where you can lend your support.

“The point about cutting VAT to 10% for hospitality is that it’s entrepreneurial.  Some businesses will use it to make more money, some will lower costs, the public will judge what the right outcome is.  It would make businesses that are marginal profitable, and that has to be good for the health of the country.”

Hal Wilson, cofounder and wine buyer, Cambridge Wine Merchants

“The EPR (Extended Producer Responsibility) is a reasonable piece of legislation in intention [charging for glass and cardboard on your imports] but it’s really badly drafted.

“The original intention of the legislation was not to include restaurants, bars and pubs in EPR since they already pay for recycling via contracts with private companies. But non-household waste is not free of EPR calculations unless it’s being served by the glass.

“To fill in our EPR return we have to ask every [trade] customer to declare how much of what we sell them is served by the glass or sold by the bottle – a lot of unnecessary work. Plus we can’t pass all of our EPR responsibilities on to our customers, since they can tell us quite truthfully that they’re paying a charge already. They don’t want to pay twice, and we are caught in the middle of it.

“It would be a lot easier to just consider that 95% of all our non-household waste [sold to trade] is already covered by other recycling schemes.

“They also need to address the punitive charge for glass, which is eight times what it is in Germany – totally out of proportion.”

Anne Jones, Wine Sustainability Consultant

“I’d rework the growing patchwork of environmental schemes that pay farmers and growers to deliver individual actions, and replace them with a single outcomes-based system focused on ecosystem health for the public good.

“We’ve created a world of biodiversity credits, carbon units, stewardship options, certifications, compliance and reporting, yet we’re still struggling to restore nature at scale and across different contexts. Too often, success is measured by paperwork and scheme compliance rather than ecological outcomes.

“I’d reward land managers for demonstrable improvements in biodiversity, soil health, water quality and catchment function, and carbon removals as well as emissions reductions (combined in the same scheme!), while keeping nature recovery as a public good rather than increasingly handing it over to private markets.

“By rewarding ecosystem function rather than individual interventions there would be less paperwork, lower administrative costs and more time spent delivering environmental outcomes on the ground.”

Gillian Murray, procurement director, C&C

“I’d like to see a change to wine duty; the administrative burden the new duty regime has caused for UK businesses has been significant.

“We now have empirical evidence that c40% of the wines that we import change ABV every year – we’re changing c1000 codes a year.

“We ask our producers to tell us when the ABV of their wine changes, but they don’t always remember. If a wine is different when it arrives we’ve got to set up a new code, then tell customers to stop ordering with the initial code and switch to a new one on a specific date. Getting that transition right is incredibly difficult.

“Plus we’ve had to put additional heads into ports, into master data and into our digital teams. We’ve definitely had an increase in our fixed costs.

“Returning to bands between 11.5% and 14.5% would mean we wouldn’t have that stop/start when wines change codes. It would be a lot less friction and bring the UK into line with the rest of the globe. Doing things differently from everyone else is not great for business.”

Rob Hobart, marketing director, Asahi UK

“We welcome the government’s current review of the definition of alcohol-free products, which could see the category expanded to include beverages containing up to 0.5% ABV. While our own alcohol-free brands – Peroni Nastro Azzurro 0.0% and Asahi Super Dry 0.0% – already meet the existing threshold, we believe broadening the classification makes sense for the category as a whole.

“First and foremost, a revised classification would enable more coherent ranging across retailers, reducing uncertainty around product positioning and merchandising. It would also give producers greater confidence to innovate, knowing that a wider range of products can be marketed within the alcohol-free category.

“Ultimately, this would increase consumer choice, improve understanding of the category and support moderation by making appealing alcohol-free options more widely available.”

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