Harpers Wine & Spirit Trade News

Canada’s cool climate calls at annual tasting

Published: 03 May, 2022

The annual Canada trade tasting returns to the UK on 10 & 11 May at Canada House in central London.

Tim Atkin MW: Time for honesty about alcohol

Published: 13 December, 2021

“People like to masturbate.” As first sentences go, this one certainly snares your attention. It’s not the only remarkable thing about Edward Slingerland’s new book Drunk: How We Sipped, Danced and Stumbled our Way to Civilization (£25, Little Brown, Spark). Nor is the author some ill-informed polemicist looking to generate a few headlines. Slingerland is Professor of Philosophy at the University of British Columbia.

WSTA calls for duty freeze and extended VAT reduction in Budget

Published: 04 October, 2021

The Wine & Spirit Trade Association (WSTA) has called on the Treasury to freeze wine and spirit duty and extend the hospitality VAT reduction in the Autumn Budget to allow the country to climb out of the Covid-19 slump.

Soapbox: Seeing red on Brexit

Published: 09 February, 2021

Cambridge Wine Merchants’ Hal Wilson calls for a united voice in the face of challenges posed to UK-EU trade by the Trade & Cooperation Agreement and the pointlessness of the dreaded VI-1 form

Wine Drinkers UK calls for first tax cut in 40 years

Published: 20 January, 2021

Wine Drinkers UK (WDUK) have renewed their calls for the government to recognise wine as the UK’s favourite drink by cutting increasingly burdensome taxes.

Calls for government to set out budgetary plans and provide businesses with certainty

Published: 24 November, 2020

The lack of certainty on key budgetary announcements is creating untenable instability for businesses, leading tax and advisory firm Blick Rothenberg has said, adding calls for the government to announce full budgetary plans sooner rather than later.

Hard calls on Brexit

Published: 18 September, 2020

With end of transition fast approaching, concern is growing over lack of clarity on UK-EU trade. Ahead of the WSTA Industry Summit 2020, Andrew Catchpole spoke with Miles Beale about goverment's current plans to impose unnecessary red tape and barriers to business.

Joe Fattorini: Branching out with bright ideas

Published: 26 May, 2020

Have you been on more video-conferencing calls than usual? Zoom, Teams, FaceTime, even venerable Skype – all seem to have found their moment. We can understand why now, but why not before? The marketer Rory Sutherland once suggested video conferencing never took off because it was “the poor man’s business travel”, not “the rich man’s phone call”. But lockdown life forces us to reframe our view of video conferencing. Today it’s everyone’s business travel. Today everyone sees its value.