France’s coronavirus crisis has sparked a fierce battle in its hallowed champagne industry over this season’s harvest, with producers and growers at loggerheads over how much bubbly should be put into bottles.
The main production houses are demanding a sharp reduction in harvest yields as sales plunge amid the COVID-19 pandemic. Growers say this would decimate their revenues.
Traditionally, both sides negotiate how many grapes are harvested by the hundreds of champagne growers each year, many of whom sell to merchants including big-name brands like Veuve Clicquot or Pommery.
Photo: AP
The goal is to limit the risks from poor harvests and drastic price swings that could put many players out of business.
But merchants say they are already loaded with stocks and with revenues hit hard by the crisis they cannot afford to produce more bottles than they can sell.
“The growers want 8,500kg per hectare and the houses want just 6,000 to 7,000 kilos,” said Bernard Beaulieu, a grower in Mutigny, a village amid rolling vineyards south of Reims, the capital of France’s Champagne region.
Photo: AP
With the price per kilo expected to remain relatively strong this year at roughly 6.50 euros, the stakes are high.
“Not having a deal with harvests just a month away, this hasn’t happened since after World War II,” Beaulieu said.
The Union des Maisons de Champagne (UMC) trade body, however, expects to sell 100 million fewer bottles this year, an unheard-of hit that will slash overall sales to 3.3 billion euros (US$3.9 billion) — down 34 percent from 2019.
And they say over one billion bottles are currently waiting in champagne cellars, representing several years of potential sales.
The UMC’s director general, David Chatillon, said he would not comment on the dispute before an August 18 meeting of the Champagne Committee, which groups both growers and merchants.
‘ROLL OF THE DICE’
Growers are especially furious because this year’s harvest, to begin on Aug. 20, is set to be “exceptionally good, with vines able to yield up to 16,000 kilos per hectare”, Beaulieu said.
Maxime Toubart, head of the SGV grower’s association, accused merchants of putting livelihoods at risk by trying to take advantage of a crisis to reduce storage costs.
“Growers are demanding a yield level that covers 2020 shipments while ensuring survival for vineyards,” Toubart said.
The situation for growers is all the more alarming, he said, since the SGV has not obtained additional payroll tax exemptions from the government to weather the coronavirus slump.
For Yves Couvreur of the FRVIC federation of independent growers, which groups some 400 vineyards that also produce their own champagne, “9,000 kilos per hectare is the limit, we can’t go any lower than that.”
To cope with a crisis that could last “two or three years,” he is pushing for a suspension of uniform harvest yields so that the different players could adapt as they see fit.
“The break-even point isn’t the same for people who sell their grapes, and those who make a living off of their brands,” he said.
Couvreur also wants more leverage against merchants by allowing growers to let their wines mature in cellars longer, up to 18 or even 24 months instead of 15 currently.
“Any proposal that prevents a flooding of the market is good,” he said.
For now, if no deal is reached on yields, the decision will be left with France’s National Institute of Origin and Quality (INAO), which governs the country’s wine appellations.
“And if that happens, it’s a roll of the dice for both sides,” Beaulieu warned.
Last week Joseph Nye, the well-known China scholar, wrote on the Australian Strategic Policy Institute’s website about how war over Taiwan might be averted. He noted that years ago he was on a team that met with then-president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁), “whose previous ‘unofficial’ visit to the US had caused a crisis in which China fired missiles into the sea and the US deployed carriers off the coast of Taiwan.” Yes, that’s right, mighty Chen caused that crisis all by himself. Neither the US nor the People’s Republic of China (PRC) exercised any agency. Nye then nostalgically invoked the comical specter
Relations between Taiwan and the Czech Republic have flourished in recent years. However, not everyone is pleased about the growing friendship between the two countries. Last month, an incident involving a Chinese diplomat tailing the car of vice president-elect Hsiao Bi-khim (蕭美琴) in Prague, drew public attention to the People’s Republic of China’s (PRC) operations to undermine Taiwan overseas. The trip was not Hsiao’s first visit to the Central European country. It was meant to be low-key, a chance to meet with local academics and politicians, until her police escort noticed a car was tailing her through the Czech capital. The
April 15 to April 21 Yang Kui (楊逵) was horrified as he drove past trucks, oxcarts and trolleys loaded with coffins on his way to Tuntzechiao (屯子腳), which he heard had been completely destroyed. The friend he came to check on was safe, but most residents were suffering in the town hit the hardest by the 7.1-magnitude Hsinchu-Taichung Earthquake on April 21, 1935. It remains the deadliest in Taiwan’s recorded history, claiming around 3,300 lives and injuring nearly 12,000. The disaster completely flattened roughly 18,000 houses and damaged countless more. The social activist and
Over the course of former President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) 11-day trip to China that included a meeting with Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leader Xi Jinping (習近平) a surprising number of people commented that the former president was now “irrelevant.” Upon reflection, it became apparent that these comments were coming from pro-Taiwan, pan-green supporters and they were expressing what they hoped was the case, rather than the reality. Ma’s ideology is so pro-China (read: deep blue) and controversial that many in his own Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) hope he retires quickly, or at least refrains from speaking on some subjects. Regardless