In short. Every bottle of wine sold in the UK pays excise duty, about £3 on a normal red, with 20% VAT on top. It is not a Brexit tax: wine has paid it since 1786. It is a flat amount per bottle, so it weighs most on cheap wine.
What Brexit changed is the border. Wine bought from an EU website is now an import, so the duty, import VAT and a courier's fee are collected when it arrives, and the seller cannot tell you the total in advance. Wine from a UK seller like us has already paid all of it, so the price you see is the price you pay.
Want the detail? Here is exactly how it works, and why wine bought from abroad can end up costing far more than it seems.
There is a tax on the bottle in front of you that almost nobody talks about. It is not VAT. It is not an import tariff. It is charged on every bottle of wine sold in this country, whether the wine was made in the Douro, in Bordeaux or in a vineyard twenty minutes down the road from you in Kent.
It is called Alcohol Duty, often known as wine duty or excise duty, and on a normal bottle of red it is a little over three pounds before a penny of VAT is added. Once you know it is there, a lot of things about British wine pricing suddenly make sense, including why a bargain bottle from a foreign website sometimes arrives with a bill attached.
It Is Not a Brexit Tax
Plenty of people assume this tax arrived with Brexit. It did not. Wine has paid excise duty in Britain since 1786, and the current system, which charges by alcoholic strength, started on 1 August 2023.
What Brexit changed was the border. Before 2021 a case of wine posted from Portugal crossed no customs check, so in practice the duty often went unpaid. Since 1 January 2021 that same case is an import. It is stopped and assessed, UK duty and import VAT are collected, and the courier usually adds a fee for handling it.
What Excise Duty Actually Costs
Since August 2023 the UK charges alcohol duty on the pure alcohol in the bottle rather than on the bottle itself. The stronger the wine, the more tax it carries. A 14.5% Alentejo red pays more than a 10.5% Vinho Verde, which is exactly what the system is designed to do.
From 1 February 2026, wine between 8.5% and 22% ABV is charged at £30.62 per litre of pure alcohol. That sounds abstract, so here is what it works out at on a standard 75cl bottle.
Duty per standard 75cl bottle, excluding VAT.
| Strength | 2026 | 2025 | From 2023 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Up to 1.2% | £0.00 | £0.00 | £0.00 |
| 1.5% | £0.11 | £0.11 | £0.10 |
| 2% | £0.15 | £0.14 | £0.14 |
| 2.5% | £0.19 | £0.18 | £0.17 |
| 3% | £0.22 | £0.22 | £0.21 |
| 3.5% | £0.70 | £0.67 | £0.65 |
| 4% | £0.80 | £0.77 | £0.74 |
| 4.5% | £0.90 | £0.87 | £0.84 |
| 5% | £1.00 | £0.96 | £0.93 |
| 5.5% | £1.10 | £1.06 | £1.02 |
| 6% | £1.20 | £1.16 | £1.11 |
| 6.5% | £1.30 | £1.25 | £1.21 |
| 7% | £1.40 | £1.35 | £1.30 |
| 7.5% | £1.50 | £1.44 | £1.39 |
| 8% | £1.60 | £1.54 | £1.49 |
| 8.5% | £1.95 | £1.88 | £1.82 |
| 9% | £2.07 | £1.99 | £1.92 |
| 9.5% | £2.18 | £2.10 | £2.03 |
| 10% | £2.30 | £2.22 | £2.14 |
| 10.5% | £2.41 | £2.33 | £2.24 |
| 11% | £2.53 | £2.44 | £2.35 |
| 11.5% | £2.64 | £2.55 | £2.67 |
| 12% | £2.76 | £2.66 | £2.67 |
| 12.5% | £2.87 | £2.77 | £2.67 |
| 13% | £2.99 | £2.88 | £2.67 |
| 13.5% | £3.10 | £2.99 | £2.67 |
| 14% | £3.22 | £3.10 | £2.67 |
| 14.5% | £3.33 | £3.21 | £2.67 |
| 15% | £3.44 | £3.32 | £3.21 |
| 15.5% | £3.56 | £3.43 | £3.31 |
| 16% | £3.67 | £3.54 | £3.42 |
| 16.5% | £3.79 | £3.66 | £3.53 |
| 17% | £3.90 | £3.77 | £3.63 |
| 17.5% | £4.02 | £3.88 | £3.74 |
| 18% | £4.13 | £3.99 | £3.85 |
| 18.5% | £4.25 | £4.10 | £3.95 |
| 19% | £4.36 | £4.21 | £4.06 |
| 19.5% | £4.48 | £4.32 | £4.17 |
| 20% | £4.59 | £4.43 | £4.28 |
| 20.5% | £4.71 | £4.54 | £4.38 |
| 21% | £4.82 | £4.65 | £4.49 |
| 21.5% | £4.94 | £4.76 | £4.60 |
| 22% | £5.05 | £4.87 | £4.70 |
Duty per standard 75cl bottle, excluding VAT. Wine at 1.2% or less pays no duty. The 2026 rates per litre of pure alcohol are £9.96 from 1.3% to 3.4%, £26.61 from 3.5% to 8.4% and £30.62 from 8.5% to 22% (2025: £9.61, £25.67 and £29.54; August 2023: £9.27, £24.77 and £28.50). Until 31 January 2025, wines from 11.5% to 14.5% all paid a flat £2.67 under the temporary easement explained below. VAT is added on top.
Then VAT at 20% goes on top, and it is charged on the duty as well as on the wine. So on a £12 bottle of 13.5% red, roughly £3.10 is excise duty and £2.00 is VAT. More than five pounds of a twelve pound bottle is tax before anyone has paid for the grapes, the bottle, the shipping or the shop.
This is why the value equation changes so sharply as you go up in price. The tax is a flat amount per bottle, not a percentage of the wine, so on a £9 bottle the tax is most of what you are paying for, and on an £18 bottle far more of your money goes into the actual wine. It is the single strongest argument for trading up a few pounds.
It Has Gone Up Twice Since 2023
The 2023 reform was not the end of the story. The rate has been raised twice since, both times on 1 February, which is when alcohol duty changes now take effect after the autumn Budget.
| Date | What changed | Rate per litre of pure alcohol |
|---|---|---|
| 1 Aug 2023 | New system, duty charged by strength | £28.50 |
| 1 Feb 2025 | Rates uprated, and the wine easement ended | £29.54 |
| 1 Feb 2026 | Rates uprated with RPI, a rise of 3.66% | £30.62 |
That middle line is the one that mattered, and it is the change most drinkers never had explained to them.
The easement, and why your red got more expensive in 2025
When the new system started in August 2023 it came with a temporary simplification. Any wine between 11.5% and 14.5% ABV was taxed as though it were exactly 12.5%, whatever it actually was. That meant a flat £2.67 a bottle in duty, before VAT, for almost every table wine on the shelf, from a delicate Vinho Verde to a heavyweight Alentejo red.
That easement ended on 1 February 2025. From that day every wine has been taxed on its real strength. A 14.5% red went from £2.67 to about £3.21 overnight, a rise of a fifth, while a 12% white barely moved. The headline rate had gone up by only a pound a litre, but the bill on a full-bodied red jumped, and Portuguese reds from the Douro and the Alentejo sit squarely in the band that took the hit.
So if you felt that big reds got noticeably dearer during 2025 and could not work out why, that is why. It was not the shops.
The pattern now is predictable. Rates are set at the autumn Budget and take effect the following 1 February, so unless a Chancellor freezes or cuts them, expect another rise on 1 February 2027.
What Happens When You Buy Wine From Abroad
This is where people get caught. A Portuguese or Spanish website shows a wine at a price that looks extraordinary compared with UK shops. It looks extraordinary because it is the price in Portugal or Spain, with their taxes, not ours.
When that wine reaches the UK border, four things happen, in this order.
1. Excise duty. Charged at the rates above. Critically, and this is the part almost nobody knows, there is no minimum value threshold for alcohol. The £135 low-value rule that exempts small parcels of ordinary goods does not apply to excise goods. One bottle is enough. HMRC's own guidance is blunt about it: it makes no difference whether you bought the wine or somebody sent it to you as a gift.
2. Customs duty. On wine that genuinely originates in the EU, and where the seller provides proof of preferential origin under the UK-EU trade agreement, this is zero. It is the one charge that usually does not bite. But it applies to excise goods of any value, so if the paperwork is wrong or the wine originated outside the EU, it lands. Customs clearance is something else: it is the courier's fee for getting the parcel through, covered in point 4, and you pay it either way.
3. Import VAT. 20%, charged not just on the wine but on the wine plus the shipping plus the excise duty. You pay VAT on the tax.
4. The courier's handling fee. The delivery company pays the taxman on your behalf and then charges you for the favour, typically somewhere between eight and fifteen pounds. It is not refundable, it is not something the seller controls, and some couriers add VAT on it as well.
Your wine sits in a depot until the bill is paid, and with some couriers it is delivered first and the bill follows weeks later.
What That Looks Like in Real Money
Here is a real one. Six bottles ordered from a Portuguese wine site in 2025, delivered to a London address, with the courier's invoice that followed.
| Item | Cost |
|---|---|
| Six bottles at €5.00 | about £26.71 |
| Shipping to the UK (€19.00) | about £16.92 |
| Excise duty / Alcohol tax (six bottles) | £14.62 |
| 20% Import VAT (wine+shipping+duty) | £11.65 |
| Courier's customs clearance fee | £7.88 |
| VAT on the clearance fee | £1.58 |
| Billed by the courier | £35.73 |
| Real cost of the wine | £79.36, or £13.23 a bottle |
At checkout the website asked for £43.63, wine and shipping together. By the time the courier had been paid, the order had cost £79.36, nearly double, and £35.73 of that arrived as a second bill after the order was already paid for. Nobody has done anything wrong. It is simply how importing works, and it is why the advertised price on a foreign site is not a price you can compare with a UK one. The duty here is at the rate in force in 2025; the same order today would cost a little more.
These are real figures from one real order, but nobody could have told you them beforehand. The seller does not set the duty, assess the VAT or know what the courier will charge, so you only find out the real cost when the courier's bill arrives, sometimes after the wine has already been drunk.
The Web Address Tells You Nothing
This is the practical warning, and it is worth more than anything else in this guide. Two web addresses fool people, and both are trivially easy to set up from anywhere on earth.
Plenty of wine sites with a British-looking address, prices shown in pounds and fluent English copy are holding their stock in another country. The moment you order, you are importing wine, whether you realise it or not.
So before you buy from any site you do not already know, check four things.
Where is the wine, right now? Not where the company is registered. Where the bottles physically are. If the site says shipping takes eight to fourteen days, the wine is not in Britain.
Does the price include UK duty and VAT? A UK seller will say so plainly, usually somewhere near the price or in the delivery terms. If a site is silent on tax, assume the worst, because a seller outside the UK cannot tell you the final figure even if they want to. They are not the ones assessing it.
Is there a UK address and a UK phone number? A real one, on the contact page, not just a form.
Read the one and two star reviews, not the score. This is the one that takes thirty seconds and tells you the most. An overseas wine seller can be genuinely excellent and still leave you with a bill on the doorstep, because the tax is not theirs to collect and not theirs to predict, so their overall rating will never show you that. Go to their reviews, filter to the lowest ratings, and look for the words "customs" or "charges". If several British customers are describing a bill they did not expect, you now know exactly what you are signing up for. Read a few of the five star reviews too, because you will often find people who loved the wine, rated the company top marks, and still mentioned the extra cost in passing.
None of this makes buying from abroad a bad idea. It can be an excellent idea for a wine you cannot get here. It is only a bad idea when you did not know you were doing it.
Why Portugal Best Wines?
Portugal Best Wines exists to take that guesswork away. Our wines are imported into the UK in bulk, with UK duty and VAT already paid, and held at our partner warehouse, Wine Logistics, so delivery takes days rather than weeks.
Every price on the site includes UK excise duty, VAT, import costs and storage. The only thing added at checkout is delivery, which you see before you pay. Nothing is collected on the doorstep, and there is no handling fee.
A Few Quick Answers
How much is UK wine duty in 2026?
From 1 February 2026, wine between 8.5% and 22% ABV pays £30.62 per litre of pure alcohol. On a standard 75cl bottle that is £2.41 at 10.5%, £3.10 at 13.5% and £4.48 for a 19.5% Port, with 20% VAT added on top. The full table above gives every strength.
Is excise duty a Brexit tax?
No. It has existed in England since 1643 and has applied to wine since 1786. Leaving the EU did not create it. What changed is that wine from the EU now crosses a customs border, so the tax is collected there, along with import VAT, and the courier charges a fee for handling it.
Has wine duty gone up recently?
Yes, twice. The rate went from £28.50 per litre of pure alcohol in August 2023 to £29.54 on 1 February 2025, and to £30.62 on 1 February 2026. The bigger change was the end of the wine easement on 1 February 2025, which pushed the duty on a 14.5% red from a flat £2.67 to about £3.21.
Do I pay duty on a single bottle sent from abroad?
Yes. Alcohol has no low-value exemption. The £135 threshold that covers small parcels of ordinary goods does not apply to excise goods, and duty is due even if the bottle was a gift.
Do I pay customs duty on wine from Portugal?
Normally no. Wine that genuinely originates in the EU pays no customs duty, as long as the seller supplies proof of origin. That is not the same as customs clearance, which is the courier's fee for getting your parcel through customs. You pay that either way, along with excise duty and import VAT.
Do I pay VAT on wine imported into the UK?
Yes. Import VAT at 20% is charged on the wine, the shipping and the excise duty together, so you pay VAT on the tax as well. The courier collects it before handing the parcel over, or bills you for it afterwards.
Does English wine pay duty too?
Yes, at exactly the same rate. Excise duty is charged on alcohol sold in the UK, not on imports. A bottle from a Sussex vineyard and a bottle from the Douro at the same strength carry the same duty.
Why is duty higher on Port than on table wine?
Because the tax is charged on pure alcohol. Port is around 19.5% rather than 13.5%, so it carries roughly £4.48 a bottle in duty against £3.10, before VAT.
Can I reclaim the courier's handling fee?
No. If you refuse the parcel you can reclaim the duty and VAT, but the handling fee is the courier's own charge for paying the tax on your behalf and it stays paid.
Is it ever worth importing wine yourself?
For something genuinely unavailable in the UK, yes. For everyday drinking, almost never, once you add duty, VAT, shipping and the handling fee to a price that was never a UK price to begin with.
Every price on this site includes all UK duties and taxes, and every bottle is already in the country. Browse the Portuguese Wines collection. Saúde!
Sources and small print. We have checked the figures carefully against these sources. Current duty rates from HMRC's Alcohol Duty rates, effective 1 February 2026, and earlier rates from HMRC's historic Alcohol Duty rates. The 2023 rate and the end of the wine easement from the House of Commons Library, What will happen to the tax on wine from 1 February 2025? and its briefing on alcohol duty. Rules on parcels from abroad from Tax and customs for goods sent from abroad. Historical dates from the UK Parliament and the record of the 1643 Excise Ordinance.
This is general information, not tax advice, and it is written for Great Britain. Northern Ireland has its own arrangements. Duty rates are set at the autumn Budget and change on 1 February. Correct at 25th September 2026.
