After today’s alcohol duty freeze, I could celebrate with a £5 bottle of merlot... but I won’t

Yes, you can still get a bottle of red for a fiver, writes wine merchant Rosamund Hall, but when half of that is tax, it’s no wonder a decent bottle costs over a tenner

Wine is a luxury, and one that I’m prepared to pay for (Getty)

Chancellor Jeremy Hunt may have put a temporary halt on any rise in alcohol duty today, but don’t crack open the bubbly to celebrate just yet. The quest to find a great bottle of wine for a tenner remains as hard as ever. It would have been staggering if the chancellor had increased duty today, just months after the largest increase in alcohol tax for 50 years came into effect in August.

In the 13 years that I worked in independent wine retail, the price point that customers most regularly asked for didn’t change much – but unfortunately, the cost of wine has.

We definitely shouldn’t be toasting this freeze – the UK currently pays some of the highest tax in Europe on wine and spirits – and thanks to our chancellor we have an even more complicated sliding scale of taxation according to the alcohol by volume (ABV). This is a headache for consumers and retailers alike.