One bottle
70cl, 43%, £37
This is our Original Gin, as sold on our web shop. We’ll fill the bottle with where your £37 goes, from the bottom up.
The Biggar Picture
Why craft gin costs what it does
Where your £37 goes when you buy a bottle of Biggar Gin. Scroll to fill the bottle.
The gin itself
About £2.50
Grain spirit, botanicals and Biggar water. Only the hearts of each run go into the bottle, so not every drop we buy ends up in one.
Glass, stopper, label and box
About £4, bought a pallet or two at a time
We can only buy bottles one or two pallets at a time, so we pay small-order prices. It’s the same for stoppers, labels and boxes. Large distilleries buy by the lorry-load, at a price to match.
Duty
£10.23, the biggest single cost
HMRC charges £33.99 on every litre of pure alcohol. This bottle holds 0.301 litres of it, so it carries £10.23 of duty. We pay the same rate as the biggest brands on the supermarket shelf. Small brewers get a duty discount; small distillers don’t.
VAT
£6.17, and some of it is tax on tax
VAT at 20% is charged on the whole price, duty included, so £2.05 of it is VAT on the duty. Add it up and £16.40 of your £37 goes to the Treasury. That’s 44p in every pound.
What’s left
£14.10 to run a distillery
Everything that keeps the Stillhouse going comes out of this. Whatever is left after that is our profit.
Where it goes
Running the Stillhouse
Wages are by far the biggest share. Then the events where you meet us, our insurance, and the electricity and heating for the Stillhouse.
Profit
Whatever’s left at the top
Once the running costs are paid, what remains of a bottle bought from us is profit. It pays for new kit, new recipes and the next batch of no more than 140 bottles. Bought through a shop or a wholesaler, there’s much less of it.
Where you buy it
Same bottle, three routes
The tax and the costs don’t change. What changes is how many businesses share what’s left. Buy from us and it all comes back to the Stillhouse. A shop or bar rightly takes a share for stocking it, and a wholesaler takes one too.
Same duty, different scale
So how can a gin cost £16?
At £16 and 37.5%, a bottle carries £11.59 of tax. That leaves £4.41 for the spirit, glass, label, transport, the shop and the brand. That only works when you make millions of bottles. And 37.5% is the lowest strength gin can be: every extra 1% adds 24p of duty to a bottle.
Duty on this bottle
£1.58 more a bottle since our first batch
When we made our first batch in 2018, the duty on a 70cl bottle at 43% was £8.65. Today it’s £10.23. On 1 February 2027 it rises again, to £10.70.
Duty on one 70cl bottle at 43% ABV, before VAT. Rates from HMRC.
Try any bottle
How much of your gin is tax?
Put in what you paid, the size and the strength from the label. It works for any spirit over 22% ABV, ours or anyone’s.
Free to use
Share the Biggar Picture
Journalists, bloggers, bars and fellow distillers are welcome to use this picture and these figures. Please credit The Biggar Gin Co. and link back to this page.
We update it whenever the duty rate changes, so the link will always show the current numbers.
Questions
Gin tax, answered
How much duty is on a bottle of gin in the UK?
Spirits duty is £33.99 per litre of pure alcohol. A 70cl bottle carries £8.92 at 37.5%, £9.52 at 40%, £10.23 at 43% and £13.56 at 57%, before VAT. From 1 February 2027 the rate is £35.54.
Is VAT charged on top of the duty?
Yes. VAT at 20% is worked out on the full price, duty included. On our £37 bottle that means £2.05 of VAT on the duty alone.
Do small distilleries pay less duty?
No. Small Producer Relief only covers drinks under 8.5% ABV, such as most beer and cider. Gin pays the full rate however small the distillery, so a 140-bottle batch pays the same rate per litre as the biggest brands.
Why does stronger gin cost more?
Duty is charged on the alcohol, so a stronger gin pays more. Each extra 1% ABV adds 24p of duty to a 70cl bottle, or 29p once VAT is added. Our gins are mostly 43%.
Why is craft gin more expensive than supermarket gin?
The duty per litre of alcohol is the same for everyone, so the difference is in everything else. Large producers buy glass, stoppers and labels by the lorry-load and bottle by the million. We buy a pallet or two at a time and make batches of no more than 140 bottles.
What’s the best way to support a small distillery?
Buy direct when you can, come on a tour and tell your friends. Buying from an independent shop or bar helps too. They’re small businesses as well.
The numbers
Where the £37 goes
One 70cl bottle of Biggar Original Gin at 43% ABV, bought from our web shop. Duty and VAT are exact. Our own costs are rounded to the nearest 50p, and the running costs are our estimate per bottle.
| Part of the price | Amount | Share |
|---|---|---|
| The gin itself: grain spirit, botanicals, water | about £2.50 | |
| Glass, stopper and label | about £2.50 | |
| Postal box | about £1.50 | |
| Made and packed | about £6.50 | 18% |
| Duty: 0.301 litres of alcohol × £33.99 | £10.23 | |
| VAT at 20% | £6.17 | |
| Tax | £16.40 | 44% |
| What’s left to run the distillery | £14.10 | 38% |
| Wages | £4.00 | |
| Events | 60p | |
| Insurance | 50p | |
| Electricity and heating | 40p | |
| Profit | what remains | |
| Total | £37.00 | 100% |
- Duty rate: HMRC, Alcohol Duty rates (spirits over 22% ABV, from 1 February 2026).
- Rate from 1 February 2027: HMRC, Alcohol Duty uprating and Small Producer Relief changes (28 October 2026).
- Earlier rates: HMRC, Historic Alcohol Duty rates.
- Small Producer Relief (drinks under 8.5% ABV only): HMRC guidance.
- VAT: standard rate of 20%, charged on the duty-paid price.
- Running costs: our yearly costs spread across the bottles we sell, rounded to 10p. Profit is what remains.
- Shares of what’s left by route are rounded from our own figures, at the same £37 shelf price.
Figures checked 4 November 2026.
Buy direct
Keep more of your £37 in Biggar
Buy from our web shop or at the Stillhouse and everything after tax and costs comes back to the people who made it.
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