Tax moans – and I don’t even live in Auckland

Today is the day – our wine gets bottled 🙂  Aaron was off early this morning to oversee things and will get some pics that I’ll post here when he gets home.  It’s quite handy that the bottling company is right across the road from the winery, so instead of having to be trucked anywhere, the wine can go straight across in a hose.  Hopefully the labels made their overnight courier journey from Leading Labels in Christchurch and in about an hours time it will be all go! 

I had thought that post bottling we would have a big stash of wine in our garage and could sneak into the supply whenever the need arose, but alas I was wrong 😦    The wine has to be stored at the bottling company as it’s against the law to store it at your house or sell it directly from your home.    I can see the reasoning in that, not just that it may prevent me becoming an alcoholic but it’s not that appealing to imagine kids playing down their local cresent among billboards advertising booze.  What is more gutting though is that every bottle that leaves the storage facility must have excise tax paid on it, at that point.  Excise tax is $1.86 per bottle of wine and is essentially a health tax to pay for the cost of alcohol abuse.  So if we want to grab a bottle of our own wine for our own use, we will have pay for it!   I should also mention that wine has a levy to fund ALAC also, this is $0.37c a bottle.  Whack on GST and you have to wonder how some companies can sell wine for $10 a bottle and still cover costs.

I know, I know how can I moan about tax when Aucklanders have just been hit with a petrol tax.   My heart went out to you guys when I heard that on the news … well momentarily 😉  But I have to mention that petrol in New Zealand is taxed at $0.43c per litre and pure alcohol is taxed at $24.77 c per litre.   I assume the petrol tax is to pay for roading in Auckland.  At least everyone that buys petrol drives in Auckland and is therefore damaging the roads so will contribute to their maintenance.  Not everyone abuses alcohol.