About the WSTA and membership
Great news! Membership is per company so when your company joins, all employees can have access to member services. Subscriptions are based on annual turnover of wines and spirits and starts from as little as c. £460+vat a year.
Find out more about WSTA member services here or click here to apply.
The WSTA represents over 350 companies producing, importing, exporting, transporting and selling wines and spirits in the United Kingdom.
WSTA members range from major retailers, brand owners and wholesalers to fine wine and spirit specialists, logistics and bottling companies, and low and no alcohol producers.
Challenge 25
You can download a number of designs from the Retail of Alcohol Standards Group website.
Please note that the WSTA nor RASG do not provide printed versions of the posters – you will have to contact a professional printer to get this done. If you need posters for Bars, Restaurants or any other on-trade premises, please contact the British Beer and Pub Association.
Finding information about companies and brands
We are unable to provide details on outlets for specific brands, but we can assist you in finding out who the brand owner of a particular product is. For details of where to purchase a particular brand, we would recommend to purchase a copy of the Harpers wine and spirit directory which will provide you with that information.
A list of WSTA members can be found on the members directory here where you can search by business type.
To get access to a full list of UK based wine and spirit companies, please purchase a copy of the Harpers wine and spirit directory which will provide you with that information.
There are various providers of wine and spirit courses in the UK. The main organisation providing such courses in the UK is the Wine and Spirit Education Trust.
The main UK wine and spirit trade publication are:
About Tax, Duty and Compliance
Duty is not payable on wine in cases where what is called ‘organoleptic’ tasting by professionals takes place within companies for the purposes of quality control, provided that the wine is not consumed.
Wine used for promotions and for tasting at, for example, trade fairs, shows, exhibitions and supermarkets must be duty-paid.
In Q4 2013, the average off trade retail prices were £4.96 (75cl) on wine, £6.34 on sparkling wine (75cl), £5.88 on fortified wine (75cl) and £12.44 on spirits (70cl).
Excise duty is a UK tax due on all alcohol imported into the UK (or for what is referred to a ‘released for consumption’) regardless of where it is from, whereas Customs Duty is a European tax on alcohol imported from outside the European Union. For example, on a wine imported from Spain excise duty would have to be paid but not customs duty, but on a wine imported from Australia both excise duty and customs duty have to be paid.
Please see the UK Government website for the latest tax: https://www.gov.uk/topic/business-tax/alcohol-duties

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