30-bottle kits: GBP 45-90 by grade
Advanced options
First kit needs ~GBP 60-80 of equipment (fermenter, demijohns or a second bucket, syphon, bottles: reuse shop bottles with new corks/caps) which amortises over every batch after. The duty maths is the quiet engine: over half a cheap shop bottle's price is duty + VAT before any wine enters it: home production pays none (legal for home consumption, no licence: selling it is a different matter entirely). Kit grades matter: the GBP 45 kit makes wine-shaped drink: the GBP 80-90 grape-juice-heavy kits make genuinely decent midweek wine after 3 months of patience.
What The Wine Kit Calculator Works Out
- Cost per bottle: the kit price divided by the bottles it makes. A 30-bottle kit at GBP 45 to GBP 90 lands finished wine at GBP 1.50 to GBP 3.00 a bottle against the GBP 7 to GBP 9 midweek shop standard.
- Saving per kit: the gap between shop and kit price multiplied by the bottles, with a year's figure for a bottle-a-week household. The saving only holds at unchanged consumption: a cellar of cheap bottles is not a saving if you drink more.
- The honest quality line: your bottle is nearly all wine while the shop's cheap bottle is nearly half tax, logistics and margin, so a good kit drinks above its cost without drinking above its class. It beats the midweek bottle, not the GBP 15 one.
- Starter equipment (advanced): fermenter, syphon, airlock and hydrometer run GBP 60 to GBP 80 and amortise over every batch after the first. Set it to zero if you already brew beer or cider; the kit overlaps almost entirely.
- Corks or caps and extras (advanced): closures at a few pence each (bottles themselves harvest free from the recycling) and any sugar, finings or sanitiser the kit does not include, giving an all-in cost per bottle.
- First-year cost per bottle (advanced): the equipment spread over the first year's bottles at your drinking rate, and how many kits it takes to repay itself, usually the first one.
- Bottles a week and kits a year (advanced): how many kits your household gets through, and the reminder that each kit needs 4-6 weeks to make plus 3 months' rest, so two on the go keeps the supply continuous.
- Duty and VAT you are not paying (advanced): UK wine duty is GBP 29.54 per litre of pure alcohol in the 11.5% to 14.5% band, about GBP 2.77 on a 75cl bottle at 12.5%, plus VAT on the duty. Home production for home consumption pays none and needs no licence; selling it is a different matter entirely.
- Units per bottle (advanced): bottle size in litres x ABV. A 75cl bottle at 12.5% is 9.4 units, so a bottle a week is two thirds of the 14-unit weekly guideline.