Good wine remains cheaper in Britain than in France, even after duty

The government has decided to cease persecuting those day-trippers to the Continent who come back loaded with drink and cigarettes. The European Commission believes this persecution to be illegal, on the grounds that goods purchased anywhere in the EU can travel without further taxation. No treaty that I know of makes any such provision; and, since duty falls equally on home produce and imports, it cannot be regarded as a constraint on free trade. I have no doubt that there is much wrong with our customs duties: but these taxes have been tacitly accepted by the British people, have eased the burden of income tax and have typically covered a third of the cost of the NHS in any year. The main cause of the collapse of village shops is that people can now bring in car-loads of booty for themselves and their neighbours, so making sales-licences more or less worthless. In short, this is another big mistake, with incalculable long-term consequences for village life, for the rural economy, for levels of direct taxation, and for our ancient and still honourable wine trade.

That said, you would be foolish not to take advantage of the new deal. And Majestic Wine, whose owner and founder, Esme Johnstone, has in any case scarpered to France, has opened four stores in the channel ports - at Cherbourg, Le Havre, Coquelles and Calais - where you can buy from their regular list at Continental prices. With starting prices at around £1 a bottle, you can easily cover the cost of the trip.

The curious thing, however, is that, with a few exceptions, good wine remains cheaper in Britain than in France, even after duty has been paid. French prices reflect the demands of a wealthy and gourmandised public. Once you pass the £5 range, therefore, they begin to pull ahead of the prices back in Britain, and when it comes to grand cru clarets and burgundies, you can make a killing by maturing them in your English cellars, and selling them ten years later in France.

Cheaper still is America, where French producers can dump their surpluses and where they must compete with the local product. Duty is replaced by lenient local taxes, and the only relic of prohibition is the warning on the bottle from the surgeon general that drinking while pregnant harms your baby. This was certainly true in my case, the baby in question - The Aesthetics of Music - having spent two extra years in the womb on account of Harvard Avenue Liquor Store. It came forth at last - to fall, like Hume's Treatise, "dead-born from the press". However, I still have a certain affection for the chapter on tonality, which coincided with a case of Chateau Malescot-St-Exupery 1986, the harmonious finish of which was like a long-drawn-out plagal cadence.

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