Consultation on changes to Legislation relating to Alcoholic Drinks in Great Britain

Overview

The UK signed a free trade agreement with New Zealand on 28^th February 2022 (‘the UK-NZ FTA’).  Annex 7A to the Agreement concerns wine and distilled spirits. To implement the agreement, the United Kingdom will make three minor changes to domestic legislation on how wine and alcoholic drinks can be described and marketed on labels. These changes allow producers and sellers more flexibility in the information they choose to include on alcoholic drink labels and will be optional for producers to adopt.

This consultation seeks your views on the likely impact of three changes needed to implement the UK-NZ FTA:

1. first, the UK Government proposes that wine products should be allowed to show alcoholic strength to one decimal place;

2. second, the UK Government proposes that when several grape varieties are used in the production of a blended wine and are shown on the label, the named varieties must total at least 95% of the volume of the wine;

3. finally, the UK Government proposes that the term ‘alc/vol’ may appear directly after the alcohol content figure displayed on the label of any alcoholic beverage.

The UK Government, Welsh Government and Scottish Government are undertaking this consultation in relation to amendments to their respective legislation to update the approach to the amendment to alcohol labelling in Great Britain. Marketing standards are a devolved matter. The Scottish Government and Welsh Government will amend legislation for their own territories.

The consultation will commence on 2^nd November 2022 and will be open to responses for a period of 3 weeks. The consultation will end at one minute to midnight on 23^rd November 2022. If you have any enquiries or wish to receive hard copies of the shared documents, please contact us by emailing: Wine.Exports@defra.gov.uk

Please see the consultation documents below.