The changes to alcohol duty has “changed the landscape” for BWS in a different way to the rise of cost prices, Waitrose’s wine buying manager Jamie Matthewson has said – but it is too early to tell the specific impact it is having. Speaking to the drinks business at Waitrose’s tasting last week, James Matthewson said that the duty rise was a different element to any cost price rises because it doesn’t “wax and wane”. “It impacts all wines vary in the in the same way, so it’s not like a bad vintage out of New Zealand where cost prices rises and you try and work how are you going to fulfil that volume,” he explained. “This is a cost that hits everything in the range – and we simply can’t absorb that.” Promotional cycles on individual lines make more difficult to work out the full impact that duty rises have, he notes, and they have impacted different sub-categories in different ways. “It was different for fortified, it was different on sparkling and different on equals, he points out. And obviously based on our colour percentage, it’s affected different areas differently.” More time is needed for it to settle and understand the overall impact for consumers, he added, but it was fair to say that over the last two years, people are consuming less in the market overall – and that the average item price is going up, which was a promising sign. “We have said for a long time, ‘drink
This Article was originally published on The Drink Business - Wine
