What Does a Bottle of Wine Really Cost?

December is when Britain buys the most wine of the year. Most bottles that land in trolleys sit between £8 and £12. But on a £10 supermarket bottle, only a sliver pays for the actual wine inside. The rest disappears into tax, packaging, transport and often a much larger retail margin than people realise.

Understanding this helps explain why some bottles taste so bad. It also explains the uncomfortable side of cheap wine: to hit very low prices, something somewhere needs to give.

What’s Really Inside a £10 Bottle?

Here is a realistic cost breakdown of a typical £10 retail bottle in the UK, using the numbers most producers and importers recognise:

• VAT (20%): £2.00
• Duty: £3.00
• Packaging (bottle, cork, label): £0.40–£1.00
• Freight and logistics: £1.25
• Winemaking budget: £0.50–£1.00
• Producer margin: £0.20–£0.50
• Retailer margin: £2.50–£4.00

After tax, packaging and transport, there is often less than £1 left to spend on the wine itself. That tiny winemaking budget and tiny producer profit is where compromises inevitably appear.

What Gets Squeezed to Hit a £10 Price?

When the wine has to be made on pennies, the pressure flows backwards through the supply chain. That often means:

• heavier pesticide and herbicide use to maximise yields
• machine harvesting, which is fast and cheap
• industrial-scale cellars with additives and flavour correction
• downward pressure on seasonal labour, often low-paid and migrant with poor labour conditions
• fruit grown for volume, not flavour

None of this appears on the supermarket shelf, but it is built into the economics of cheap wine.

Why £15–20 Is Where Everything Changes

Once you move to £15–20, almost all the extra money goes directly into the vineyard and the cellar because VAT and duty barely move.

That means growers can invest in:

• organic or lower-input farming
• reduced or zero pesticide use
• fairer labour and hand-harvesting
• slower, more careful winemaking
• less need for additives
• better grapes, which is where real quality starts

This is the price point where wine stops being industrial and starts being agricultural again.

Buy Less, But Better

December is expensive enough without moralising anyone’s shopping. But if you want to drink well (and ethically) a small shift makes a big difference.

• Buy fewer bottles but better ones. A thoughtful £18 bottle is worth far more than three £6 bottles.
• Swap cheap wine for cocktails or spritzes at parties. You avoid the compromises built into ultra-low price points.