The budget bites the nation's boozers
Tim Kitchener-Smith is the founder and company director of Kitchener-Smith Wines. Having spent his entire working life involved with wine, previously with Oddbins, and then a successful stint at La Cave in Mayfair, Tim left the UK to set-up a wine shop/bar in the French ski resort of Les Arcs 1950, a brand new, mostly Brit owned, Canadian built mini Disney-World, but covered in snow. 
Thank you, Darling…
So a bottle of wine has gone up by 14 pence. “Big deal”, I hear you cry, but wait for the next time you go to a restaurant because that’s when you’ll notice a significant difference. Most restaurants up their prices, from cost, by 3-4 times the amount. You’re basically looking at an increase of a couple of pounds on your standard bottle of Pinot Grigio. Well, not quite, but in northern Italy incidentally, wine producers have been caught out recently for putting, shock horror, non Pinot Gris grapes (ie: much cheaper) into their wines, and passing it off as traditional Pinot Grigio. The swines! Naturally, the price of ‘proper’ Pinot Gris grapes has shot through the roof and the effects could cause Mayfair mums to start picketing around the houses of Parliament come the first signs of summer.
I’ve also just read that sales in off licences and high street wine stores have enjoyed up to 50% increase on sales this week simply because at midnight on Sunday the price change comes into effect. One guy spent £3,300 in Majestic just because he wanted to keep looking after the pennies. That’s fine mate but guess what, you’ve just spent a complete fortune and you’re more likely to get through it a lot quicker now that it’s sitting in your house with a ‘come and drink me’ label attached to it than you would have done by buying it a case at a time. Never mind.
So why has the Government, yet again, bent us all over the piano stool and given us a jolly good whack when all we’re trying to do is enjoy one of life’s great pleasures? Well we, the guzzling mob here in Briton, spend over £10 Billion on wine and Champagne each and every year. Tax is set to be £1.46 on a bottle of wine, the highest in the EU.
However, if you were the Chancellor and you knew that we live now in an era of binge drinking; from ‘A’ list celebrities and members of the Royal family falling out of West End nightclubs at four in the morning, to chavs in shopping malls on a Friday night, necking White Lightning and abusing shopping trolleys, you’d soon realise that everybody likes drinking, so why not charge them extra to do it? Wine would eventually go down the same route as cigarettes as it would soon become cool to be seen to drink because no-one else could afford to do it. Finally,no-one’s drinking, everybody’s packed up smoking and all of a sudden hospitals are free of ‘incidents’ at weekends and the NHS becomes the proper institution it should already be.
You see people have enjoyed alcoholic drinks since prehistoric times, making drinking one of the few strands that runs throughout the history of western civilisation. Appreciating the art, music or literature of long-vanished cultures can require years of study; recreating their drinks, and comparing them to what we enjoy today, is simple in comparison, not to mention more fun. The consumption of alcohol is so widespread in history, says Patrick McGovern, an archaeological chemist at the University of Pennsylvania, that drinking is, in effect, “a universal language”.
David J. Hanson, Ph.D. reckons that “alcohol is a product that has provided a variety of functions for people throughout all history. From the earliest times to the present, alcohol has played an important role in religion and worship. Historically, alcoholic beverages have served as sources of needed nutrients and have been widely used for their medicinal, antiseptic, and analgesic properties. The role of such beverages as thirst quenchers is obvious and they play an important role in enhancing the enjoyment and quality of life. They can be a social lubricant, can facilitate relaxation, can provide pharmacological pleasure, and can increase the pleasure of eating. Thus, while alcohol has always been misused by a minority of drinkers, it has proved to be beneficial to most.”
So what’s the solution? We’re in the midst of an economy crisis. Banks are seriously screwing things up. Credit will soon be a thing of the past. Mortgage repayments will become harder to maintain, school fees even more so, etc etc, and what’s the one thing we turn to in times of desperation and want?!
Kitchener-Smith Wine Tours!!!
“In a world where people long to explore the beautiful lands that have brought us such fine wines as: Champagne, Bordeaux and Burgundy, one man risks all for the discerning palates of others…!”
Coming to an in-box near you, soon…!
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Email tim.ks.wines@googlemail.com for more info and future wine tastings…
