It’s time to kiss goodbye to £2.99 wine. Not because we are all buying better bottles, but because Gordon Brown says so. The Treasury warned the UK wine trade last month to expect a tough budget, with duty increases likely to be well above inflation. Subsequent trade speculation has veered from the frankly dismissive – in the belief that duty hikes would have a disastrous effect on alcohol revenue – to an acceptance that the Chancellor, Alistair Darling, will bump up table wine duty from £1.33 a bottle to £1.71, the level at which sparkling wines are rated. This would mean that duty and VAT would be almost £2 a bottle, even for the cheapest wines, leaving a tiny sum for transport, packaging and the actual cost of the wine itself. Gloomier still are predictions that duty on alcohol generally may go up 30 per cent to deal with binge drinking.

The painful truth is that if sterling continues to fall against the euro (it’s already 10 per cent down on last year), wine prices won’t move up just one notch, to £3.49, but two, to £3.69 or £3.89. Given that Asda and other price-sensitive supermarkets register a 30 per cent drop in sales every time their £2.99 or £3.99 wines pop up a few pence, I’d say the likely budget increases will be crippling for all.

Exacerbating this are the problems besetting some of Britain’s largest wine suppliers, most notably Australia. Three consecutive bumper harvests there were followed by savage drought and frosts, which ruined the 2007 vintage and are likely to reduce 2008’s yield, too. Overnight the £3.99 Aussie reds and whites have been replaced almost everywhere with £4.99 bottles.

Getting used to paying more for the bottles you’d crack open mid-week without ceremony will be hard. My advice is to stock up now on £2.99 bottles before the budget arrives next month. Zingy, drinkable £2.99 aperitif whites to consider include the Co-op’s Argentinian sauvignon blanc (see the star buys below) and Sainsbury’s delicious light, lemony 2006 Muscadet, La Régate (£2.99), which is a testament to the Loire’s tasty whites in this vintage. Also at Sainsbury’s is the brilliant 2006 Gran Tempranillo (£2.99), a fine, fat, spicy, plummy mouthful from Cariñena, which lies southeast of Rioja. Majestic Wine’s much-admired Cuvée de Richard range from France is already being priced at £3.39 and £3.79 a bottle, but thankfully its robust, inky, yet plummy 2006 La Serrana Tempranillo, a Spanish table wine from Castilla y León in the north, is still £2.99 a bottle.

Even Tesco is struggling to make this price point work, but its fat, supple, spicy 2007 own-label Argentinian Shiraz supplied by Argento is a good £2.99 buy, ditto its pleasant, ripe, curranty 2007 Chilean Cabernet Sauvignon. Make the most of them while you can.

jane.macquitty@thetimes.co.uk

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