The wine industry is broken. Here's how we fix it

20 octobre 2026

You pay £10 for a bottle of wine. How much of it reaches the person who grew the grapes?

Most of us never ask. We should.

The answer says a lot about why so much wine tastes the same, and why the people who make it with care struggle to stay in business.

Where your tenner goes

First, the bit nobody can dodge: tax. Take a £10 bottle at 13.5% alcohol.
Duty is £3.10 and VAT is £1.67.
Together that is £4.77, nearly 48% of the price (The Sunday Times, using Wine and Spirit Trade Association figures).

The same article estimates shipping and logistics at 40p, packaging at 75p, a new packaging-recycling cost scheme called EPR at 15p, and the retailer's margin at £2.
That leaves £1.93. And that £1.93 is not the winemaker's wage: it has to cover the farming, the harvest, the barrels, the winery and the paperwork.

Then the supply chain takes its cut.
The winery sells to a distributor or merchant.
They sell to a wholesaler or a supermarket buyer.
The shelf adds its margin.

Every step needs paying, and every step pushes the one thing it can control, the price paid to the grower, downwards.

What really makes me angry is this:
When I talk to small winemakers, they do everything themselves, the whole craft.
And quite a few have told me they earn less than minimum wage for the work they put in.
I know it's a passion.
But that is no reason to pay people badly.
A lot of them also keep another job on top of looking after their vines.

That is ridiculous

What cheap wine really costs

When the grower is squeezed, the farming gets squeezed too.

Vines are perennials, so you cannot rotate them like wheat. Many conventional vineyards lean on repeated spraying to protect the crop.
Vines are a small part of our farmland: about 2% of the EU's utilised agricultural area in 2020 (Eurostat).

In France, the average vineyard parcel received 18 treatments in the 2019 season, 3.8 of them with biocontrol products. That average includes organic parcels (Agreste, French Ministry of Agriculture).

The point still stands. Cheap, high-volume wine rewards the cheapest farming.

Healthy soil, cover crops and biodiversity take time, and nobody pays for that on a thin margin.

Same bottle, shorter route

Here is what we do differently at Vivan.

We are a not-for-profit, multi-stakeholder cooperative. Our winemakers are members, with a say in the decisions: one member, one vote.

As far as we know, no other online wine shop is built this way. If you've found one, tell us!

We sell natural, organic and biodynamic wine, and you can buy wine direct from the winemaker.
Each bottle is made by an independent European grower, packed by the winemaker and shipped direct to you.
No warehouses, no middlemen.

We do not pretend duty and VAT vanish. They don't. But when the wine goes from cellar to your door, there are fewer hands in the middle taking a slice, and the winemaker can set a fair price for the work.

Our winemakers decide their own price for the website.
We don't buy the wine in advance, so they sell what they need to sell.
The price is not set by the quality of the wine, or by whether it carries an AOC or AOP.

It is set by what they need to make a living. That is what matters most.

Fixing it is a buying habit

The industry will not fix itself. The default is set by what we all put in the basket. Buy from the grower who farms regeneratively, and farming that way becomes a business that works. Do it enough times and it stops being the exception.

Our mission is simple: make regenerative farming the default for winemakers, not the exception.

Maybe you can't afford pricier wine every time you open a bottle. That's okay. But once a year, buy one case from a small artisan winemaker. It will mean a lot to them. It helps keep craft work alive, and you will taste really good wine. Some people plant trees in their garden. You can also choose to buy a case from a grower who farms with care.

If you're curious, meet Ilaria at Villa Agavì, or meet the winemakers and pick one whose story grabs you. Which part of the wine industry would you most like to see change?