Suppose a supermarket has a terrible £2.99 bottle of wine. If they are forced to charge £4.50 for that, it means that the supermarket makes a shed load of profit. However, if the independent wine shops of the UK, and the likes of Oddbins and the Threshers group, then make a big deal about the quality of their £4.50 wines being better than this over inflated £2.99 plonk from Supermarket, consumers may then switch from buying in supermarkets and go to a wine shop. Supermarkets in turn will then be forced to provide better quality wines at £4.50, so their customers will, in time, benefit as well.

I believe that Italy has a standard price for bread, so bakers producing a good, tasty loaf of bread get the custom, whereas a baker producing high profit but poor quality bread don't get any sales. The result is that bread quality has improved as people move to the better baker. This could happen with minimum pricing in the UK assuming that the government doesn't take all the cash.

I accept your point that there are people, pensioners etc, who buy £2.99 because that is all they can afford, and they may have to reduce the amount of wine they buy, so I’m not saying minimum pricing is without serious flaws, but as long as the government didn’t harvest in the cash from the minimum pricing and therefore didn’t bump up all price points, the quality of cheaper wine in the UK could go up and people could drink better wine.

Suppose a supermarket has a terrible £2.99 bottle of wine. If they are forced to charge £4.50 for that, it means that the supermarket makes a shed load of profit. However, if the independent wine shops of the UK, and the likes of Oddbins and the Threshers group, then make a big deal about the quality of their £4.50 wines being better than this over inflated £2.99 plonk from Supermarket, consumers may then switch from buying in supermarkets and go to a wine shop. Supermarkets in turn will then be forced to provide better quality wines at £4.50, so their customers will, in time, benefit as well.

I believe that Italy has a standard price for bread, so bakers producing a good, tasty loaf of bread get the custom, whereas a baker producing high profit but poor quality bread don't get any sales. The result is that bread quality has improved as people move to the better baker. This could happen with minimum pricing in the UK assuming that the government doesn't take all the cash.

I accept your point that there are people, pensioners etc, who buy £2.99 because that is all they can afford, and they may have to reduce the amount of wine they buy, so I’m not saying minimum pricing is without serious flaws, but as long as the government didn’t harvest in the cash from the minimum pricing and therefore didn’t bump up all price points, the quality of cheaper wine in the UK could go up and people could drink better wine.

what have you seen on “passive drinking”? links?

good points!

also wanted to point out that in practice the minimum bottle price would be over £5 as VERY few bottles are made at 12% alc (for example 15% ABV = £5.62 minimum)