Hong Kong restaurant customers pay up to 19 times more for a bottle of wine than it costs at the vineyard door.
A Finance Bureau survey of four hotels and two restaurants identified large discrepancies in value for money. Drinkers who paid more than $1,500 for a bottle of wine in one hotel got a drop for which producers charged less than $100. However, those who ordered wine with a similar price at a second hotel got wine with a vineyard cost of almost $500.
A Lan Kwai Fong restaurant cited by the bureau charged drinkers $190 for a bottle which originally cost $10.
The survey - attacked as misleading by industry players - was conducted to justify an increase on the duty on wine.
'As the duty is levied on the ex-factory price of wine, rather than its far higher retail price, the actual effect of the proposed increase in duty will be minimal,' authorities concluded in a written submission to the Bills Committee.
The increase in duty for most of the wines sold in four hotels surveyed, along with a restaurant in Soho and one in Lan Kwai Fong, accounted for just 1.2 per cent to 3.1 per cent of retail prices, the bureau said.
