Benjamin Bestgen

It is fair to say that the British enjoy wine. Not only is the UK the fifth largest wine consumer globally. It is also the home of internationally acclaimed wine education and industry organisations like the Wine and Spirits Education Trust and the Institute of Masters of Wine. And then there is the Oxford Companion to Wine, which, in my “interested amateur” opinion, is perhaps one of the most well-researched encyclopaedias on wine available.

That is all the more remarkable, as the UK is not a major wine producer by any means. Britain has had very limited local production since Roman times as the climate was largely unsuitable for making quality wine – too wet, too cold, not sunny enough. But in recent decades, climate change has led to southern parts of England being generally warmer and sunnier, with various “cool climate” suitable grapevines taking well to the chalk and limestone soils found in the south of England and parts of Wales.

English wines positively surprised many tasters and even French wine makers are buying parcels of English vineyards in anticipation of climate change adversely affecting traditional French regions in future.

Law and wine

Unsurprisingly, there are many touchpoints. As an agricultural product, various laws and regulations on grape growing and vineyard management apply. As a beverage, there are rules around production methods, permitted and forbidden additives, storage, transport, or bottling. Consumer protection laws impose criteria on wine labels and their mandatory content, marketing and sales, including minimum age requirements. Being an alcoholic drink, the taxman dips his beak in and the laws and treaties around import and export of wine come into play when consignments of the stuff cross borders. Intellectual property law applies to wine labels, brand names and even the shape of a bottle, if distinctive enough.

Additional local by-laws will apply in various jurisdictions if a wine has special labels, e.g. “Grand Cru”, “Reserva” or “Prädikatswein” or claims a protected origin designation, such as “Champagne”, “Chablis”, “Rioja”, “Tokaji” or “Chianti” (all of which are geographical regions, which have become synonymous with the styles of wine produced there).
As wine is also an internationally beloved beverage, there is in some areas drive for increasing global standardisation. Much like the EU’s GDPR became the benchmark for data protection minimum standards internationally, wine producers who wish to see their wines sold abroad will be mindful of gold standards around mandatory labelling information or permitted levels of sulphites as a preservative.

Wine as an investment

Lesser known laws cover certain commercial aspects of the wine trade. In the Oxford Companion to Wine (5th ed., 2023), Anthony Rose, Chloe Ashton and Ella Lister explain that buying wine as an investment carries similar risks to other investments in perishable commodities. The basic idea is that an investor buys wine cheaply, keeps it in storage until there is market demand for it and speculates that they can sell at a profit. Since the 1800s, when wine speculation became more pronounced, some investors have made significant profits doing this but in general wine is a high risk investment.

For starters, it is perishable. The vast majority of wines are made for early enjoyment and won’t improve with age. Only a very small fraction of non-fortified wines made worldwide could potentially age well for perhaps 10 to 20 years. Even fewer wines may last longer and still be good. The grape variety and its chemical properties, the winemaking techniques and storage all play critical roles here.

Secondly, storage matters: wine is an organic substance. If stored incorrectly, it will spoil. Temperature, light conditions, humidity, movement and transportation all need to be consistently right and even more so if one attempts to age the wine. Contracts around wine storage and transport must address such points.

Thirdly, proving ownership: unless the investor is able to store their wine personally, the wine will normally sit in a commercial warehouse or cellar. It is imperative to ensure the correct legal documentation that links the right to own a certain number of bottles, crates or barrels to specific ones stored in that warehouse or cellar. Otherwise, it is unclear which bottles, barrels or sets of crates are yours.

Fourthly, nobody knows what the wine market will be like in future. For instance, France is currently battling a decline in wine exports, as consumers in many countries face cost of living problems and look towards wine-producing countries that offer similar quality for better prices. Further, fashions change: the wines that were all the rage when you bought them may have fallen out of favour by the time you want to sell.

And finally, unless one buys shares in a wine fund instead of the wine itself, investing in wine comes with added costs: next to the initial acquisition (and perhaps lawyers’ and brokers’ fees) there are storage fees, insurance, transport costs and of course, taxes once you sell it.

And speaking of taxes…

Wine writer David Williams noted that tax on alcohol itself is nothing new. However, it used to be that wine between eight per cent and 15 per cent ABV was simply taxed per hectolitre at a set rate. The last Tory government decided, however, to tax any alcoholic drink by strength, with certain concessions for beer and cider. As a result, as of 31 January 2025, wines with higher alcohol content incur higher tax.

Williams adds that this penalises producers of wines in warmer countries: as warmth and sunshine help grapes to increase their sugar levels, it is difficult for winemakers to keep alcohol below 13 per cent to 14.5 per cent, unless they harvest grapes very early, which affects flavour. Red wines also tend to be more alcoholic, meaning fans of good reds will see their shopping bill increase further next year.

Wine and fraud

Like many things people pay top dollar for, such as fine art, wine fraud is nearly as old as wine itself. Wine has been adulterated, mislabelled, premium wine blended with inferior wines or even mixed with noxious substances, such as the Austrian wine scandal of 1985. In recent decades, wine traders like Hardy Rodenstock or Rudy Kurniawan were implicated in high-profile wine frauds where people who paid significant sums for certain rare bottles found they didn’t quite get what they had paid for.

Water rights

Due to climate change and mankind’s use (and pollution) of bodies of water, many wine regions in the world face increasingly drier and hotter conditions. This gets exacerbated by wildfires, which have destroyed entire vineyards in California, Chile, Greece or Australia. Even if a vineyard is not burned, the smoke from nearby fires can affect grapes, giving the resulting wine smoke taint and making it unsellable to consumers.

Politicians are faced with stark choices when deciding who gets access to how much water and when. Compared to other agricultural products and the water needs of urban populations, wine is not a priority crop. In addition, England’s wine industry has the dubious privilege of being located in one the very few regions worldwide that fully privatised a critical resource like water. It is largely controlled by private equity firms, many of which are not based in the country (unlike Scotland, where water remains in public ownership). That means that political petitions of English wine growers in case of drought will have little effect, as they’ll have to take their case up with the private owners of England’s water, some of which couldn’t even be trusted with raw sewage.

Benjamin Bestgen is a solicitor and notary public (qualified in Scotland). He holds a Master of Arts degree in philosophy and tutored in practical philosophy and jurisprudence at the Goethe Universität Frankfurt am Main and the University of Edinburgh. He is the author of “Practical Jurisprudence – Attempts to make legal philosophy interesting” (2022).
An interested amateur in wine, he also passed WSET Levels 1 and 2 (distinction) and is currently studying for Level 3.