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.
In late October of 1873 the government of Japan decided against sending a military expedition to Korea to force that nation to open trade relations. Across the government supporters of the expedition resigned immediately. The spectacle of revolt by disaffected samurai began to loom over Japanese politics. In January of 1874 disaffected samurai attacked a senior minister in Tokyo. A month later, a group of pro-Korea expedition and anti-foreign elements from Saga prefecture in Kyushu revolted, driven in part by high food prices stemming from poor harvests. Their leader, according to Edward Drea’s classic Japan’s Imperial Army, was a samurai
The following three paragraphs are just some of what the local Chinese-language press is reporting on breathlessly and following every twist and turn with the eagerness of a soap opera fan. For many English-language readers, it probably comes across as incomprehensibly opaque, so bear with me briefly dear reader: To the surprise of many, former pop singer and Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) ex-lawmaker Yu Tien (余天) of the Taiwan Normal Country Promotion Association (TNCPA) at the last minute dropped out of the running for committee chair of the DPP’s New Taipei City chapter, paving the way for DPP legislator Su
Located down a sideroad in old Wanhua District (萬華區), Waley Art (水谷藝術) has an established reputation for curating some of the more provocative indie art exhibitions in Taipei. And this month is no exception. Beyond the innocuous facade of a shophouse, the full three stories of the gallery space (including the basement) have been taken over by photographs, installation videos and abstract images courtesy of two creatives who hail from the opposite ends of the earth, Taiwan’s Hsu Yi-ting (許懿婷) and Germany’s Benjamin Janzen. “In 2019, I had an art residency in Europe,” Hsu says. “I met Benjamin in the lobby
April 22 to April 28 The true identity of the mastermind behind the Demon Gang (魔鬼黨) was undoubtedly on the minds of countless schoolchildren in late 1958. In the days leading up to the big reveal, more than 10,000 guesses were sent to Ta Hwa Publishing Co (大華文化社) for a chance to win prizes. The smash success of the comic series Great Battle Against the Demon Gang (大戰魔鬼黨) came as a surprise to author Yeh Hung-chia (葉宏甲), who had long given up on his dream after being jailed for 10 months in 1947 over political cartoons. Protagonist