They’re known as ‘Rishi wines’ and, suddenly, they’re everywhere. For those who don’t know or can’t guess what a Rishi wine might be, it’s one with an abv just below 11.5%. The name comes from the Prime Minister’s highly controversial changes to alcohol duty, which Sunak declared would ‘simplify’ the system. Those who have to implement them agree that they’re ludicrously complex, burdening the wine industry with even more bureaucracy for which the drinker ultimately has to pay.
The changes create a financial incentive to drink lower-abv wines. From February 2025, if the Conservatives are returned to government, the plan is to calculate duty according to the precise abv, measured to the nearest 0.5%. For the time being, wines with an abv of 11.5%-14.5% fall into a single band with duty fixed at £2.67 per bottle. Below 11.5% abv, you pay less. On a wine with an abv of 11%, for instance, duty is £2.35, at 10.5% it’s £2.24, at 10% £2.13 and so on (and it gets cheaper still below 8.5%). The VAT added on to the duty amplifies these differences.
Since the British drinker is notoriously tight-fisted, it has focused supermarket buyers’ minds on lower-alcohol wines that will be cheaper and therefore more appealing on the shelf. Or on wines that can be sold for a greater profit.
But why stop at 10.5% or 11%? Dial down the alcohol a tiny bit further and you find wines in the 8%-10% abv range that are known as ‘mid-strength’ wines. A few – like spätlese riesling from the Mosel or effervescent moscato from Asti – have been around for ever. Others have been painstakingly developed to tempt the new breed of moderate drinker. The Doctors’ pinot noir and sauvignon blanc from Marlborough, for instance, created by the quality-minded Dr John Forrest, which have an abv of 9.5%, fall into this category.