Wine in London
Can you still find something good to drink without taking out a second mortgage?
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The UK wine trade hasn’t had it easy in recent years. Ever higher, more complex taxation and the sucker punch of Brexit pushed prices to levels that rival New York - a city where it’s hard to get a glass of anything potable for under $25.
Living in Amsterdam for over a decade, I’m used to low wine duty and EU mainland pricing. But last week I spent a few days back in my old stomping grounds. Gearing up for a night out with wine friends, I wondered what to expect. Penury? Disappointment? Abstinence?
Why so spenny
Since February 2026, UK duty applies on a sliding scale based on alcohol percentage. That means, for example, a wine with 12% ABV that retails for £10 carries a total tax burden of £4.43 (Duty of £3.30, which includes VAT, plus the VAT on the rest of the price, which is £1.33). That leaves barely half the cash to split between grower, importer and retailer.
Add the customs charges levied for bringing wine into the UK, and it’s not too hard to understand why a bottle retailing in the EU for £25 ends up costing £50 on the shelf in the UK. And then £100+ in restaurants. Both importer and restaurateur need a margin, and usually it’s percentage based - so small price increases at the beginning of the supply chain become exponentially larger at the point of sale.
I chose that £25 example deliberately. Honey Spencer, author of Natural Wine, No Drama and co-owner of restaurant Sune recently posted that she was sick of high priced wines that she can no longer personally afford to drink. Burgundy, amongst others, was named and shamed.
She listed some bottles from her list that she felt offered fair value. Gut Oggau’s Josephine at £104 was one1. Sune’s current published list includes their Atanasius 2022 for £99. Both are from the winery’s entry level tier. Atanasius retails for between £25 - £29 within the EU. I can drink it on a wine list in Amsterdam for around double that price2, so it hurts when it’s double again in London. And I have to wrap my head around drinking a basic cuvée for what will be, with service, well into three figures.
I’m not having a go at Spencer or Restaurant Sune. Their backs are against the wall, like everyone in the UK restaurant trade. But it illustrates one of the barriers to enjoying wine in London.
On the town
Back to my night out. We started by checking out a hyped new Soho opening, Charlie Mellor’s Osteria Vibrato. The name sounds a bit wanky, but it carries a story: Mellor used to sing tenor in a previous life. You get to sample some full-scale operatic warbling in the fancy bathrooms.
