A TONIC wine brewed by monks in Devon could be banned from shops in Scotland where its consumption has been linked to violent crime.

Buckfast Tonic Wine has been the focus of controversy north of the border since figures showed it featured in 5,000 crime reports by Strathclyde Police in the last three years.

The monks at Buckfast Abbey, where the fortified wine is made, said the drink should not be made a scapegoat for the scourge of alcohol-related crime.

But the wine now faces a backdoor ban, not on the basis of its powerful 15 per cent alcohol content, but because of its high  caffeine content. Each bottle contains the equivalent of eight cans of cola.

The Scottish Labour Party wants to impose a legal limit of 150 milligrams of caffeine per litre of alcohol – less than half Buckfast’s content of 375mg per litre.

This would bring Scotland into line with the 150mg per litre caffeine limit in countries like Denmark, Iceland and Norway.

The idea will be looked at by Labour’s Alcohol Commission, which is being launched to consider how to tackle Scotland’s binge-drinking epidemic. Scottish Labour health spokesman Jackie Baillie said: “The research suggests you are more likely to end up in hospital or be assaulted if you drink these products.”

It was revealed last month that despite its peaceful and harmonious origins in the heart of the Devon countryside, Buckfast Tonic Wine has been featured in thousands of police reports by Scotland’s biggest force.

Almost one in 10 of those crimes was violent and the Buckfast bottles themselves were used as weapons 114 times over the past three years.

Scotland is a big market for the Buckfast drink, accounting for almost half its sales.

The Hampshire company, J Chandler and Co, which distributes Buckfast in Scotland, said it would give evidence to the Alcohol Commission.

But, a spokesman added, “provided it’s going to be constructive and they’re not playing party politics”.

Nicola Sturgeon, the Scottish Nationalist health minister, poured scorn on the commission, saying that picking on Buckfast would not solve the problem.

“Obsessing about Buckfast, which accounts for 0.5 per cent of alcohol sold in Scotland, ignores the elephant in the room, which is the excessive consumption of cheap alcohol,” she said.

Scottish Liberal Democrats have indicated they do not support the Labour plan to ban Buckfast, with Robert Brown, the party’s justice spokesman, arguing: “Simply banning one or the other will not do the trick.”

The Alcohol Commission is chaired by education expert Professor Sally Brown of the Royal Society of Edinburgh.

She told BBC Scotland’s Politics Show there was no “golden bullet” for Scotland’s drink problem.

She promised to take a wide-ranging look at the binge-drinking epidemic.

She added: “Just as I wouldn’t be wanting to look at minimum unit pricing as the thing to solve it, I wouldn’t want to look at Buckfast, or indeed even caffeine, as the other bullet that might solve it.”