French protests and storms, microplastics in beverages, human trafficking in Champagne

Before I get to global news, a bit of team news. It was announced yesterday that Jancis has been appointed Patron of the Regenerative Viticulture Foundation. In taking on this role she has agreed to amplify the foundation’s work and encourage winegrowers, producers and consumers to work towards an environmentally responsible wine industry. This builds on work she has been doing for years at JancisRobinson.com – using the site to raise awareness of important environmental issues. The site has long supported the RVF, which Jancis describes as, ‘the only global organisation dedicated to making regenerative farming practices scalable, credible and practical across the wine industry’.

I also want to make sure you know that registration for the Old Vine Conference opened yesterday. The conference will take place in California from 31 October through 4 November. Jancis will deliver the keynote address on 31 October in Napa. You can find a link to registration in the transcript of this newscast or on our ‘where to find us’ page in the dropdown menu under ‘community’.

Huge storms in France

The last few weeks have not been kind to French winegrowers.

On 14 and 15 June hail hit the Châtillonnais region north of Dijon. The storm damaged approximately one-third of the 400 hectares (988 acres) planted in the region – mostly containing fruit destined for Crémant de Bourgogne. The storm also caused mudslides in Aloxe-Corton and Pernand-Vergelesses but did not damage any vines.

On 19 June much of France entered a heatwave, with temperatures reaching 38 °C/100 °F in some departments and causing concern about the possibility of berry necrosis, in which berries burn and shrivel due to extreme heat.

The heat broke on 24 June when massive thunderstorms moved across much of France; the intensity of the storms killed two people, injured 17 and left more than 110,000 homes without power. A Wine-news listener in Landes, south of Bordeaux, wrote in to share that his region experienced hailstones as large as 6 cm/2.5 in but he did not know the extent of damage to local vineyards. Photos in The Telegraph show golf ball sized hail in the Dordogne, south-east of Bordeaux. Luckily, Bordeaux proper seems to have been spared; our correspondent James Lawther reports that there was, ‘a tiny bit of hail in Bordeaux but very isolated with no particular sector hard hit and little or no damage’. Meanwhile, Météo-France predicts more heat to come this weekend, peaking next Monday and Tuesday. If you have any details on the effects of this weather on the vineyards, please email me at news@jancisrobinson.com.

Microplastics in beverages

A study commissioned by France’s food safety agency ANSES and published in the Journal of Food Composition and Analysis that looks at the level of microplastics in beverages in different types of containers has generated a wave of provocative headlines across major media outlets. The New York Post ran one that read ‘Glass bottles found to have five to 50 times as many microplastics as plastic bottles in shocking new study’…but if you read the study, it’s not about the glass as much as it’s about the closure.

The abstract of the study clearly states, ‘it was observed that the most contaminated containers were glass bottles. Caps were suspected to be the main source of contamination, as the majority of particles isolated in beverages were identical to the color of caps and shared the composition of the outer paint.’

In essence the study finds that crown caps rub together during storage resulting in micro-scratches in the alkyd thermosetting resin or PES/PET-based paint used to label these caps, which then results in loose microplastics which, if left unrinsed, end up in the beverage. However, wine is mostly not affected. As the report states, ‘The results show that glass containers were more contaminated than other packaging for all beverages except wine, because wine bottles were closed with cork stoppers rather than metal caps.’

Protests in France over supermarket pricing

On 18 June winegrowers in Bordeaux and the Côtes du Rhône gathered to protest the German-owned supermarket chain Aldi after reading that the beer, wine and spirits buyer at Aldi France, Roger Anthony, told French publication Vitisphere that his selling Bordeaux and Côtes du Rhône at €1.99 a bottle still managed to make winegrowers money.

Cédric Pointet, president of the Young Farmers of Gironde, told Vitisphere that the protests were to remind the public that at a retail price of €3 it is impossible to pay for the production of a wine and for the intermediaries responsible for delivering the wine to the public.

Human trafficking in Champagne

On 19 June, a case known as ‘the grape harvest of shame’ went on trial in Châlons-en-Champagne. As reported in The Guardian, 57 people who had been employed by a firm that supplied labour to wineries in Champagne had held workers in ‘fetid housing’ and forced them to work in conditions likened to slavery where they were provided too little food – largely rice and rotten sandwiches – and transported via vans with no seats or windows. FranceBleu reported that the deputy prosecutor for this case, Jean-Philippe Moreau, requested that the manager of the service company be sentenced four years in prison and a €300,000 fine, that the recruiters for the company be sentenced to three years in prison and a €100,000 fine, that the company be dissolved, and that the wine co-operative that was using the service be fined €200,000. The court will issue a verdict on 21 July.

Vietnam’s alcohol tax hike

On 14 June Reuters reported that Vietnam’s National Assembly had approved a proposal to raise the consumption tax on alcoholic beverages from 65% to 90% by 2031. This is despite the fact that the chief of the Beer and Alcoholic Beverage Association said industry revenue has been in decline for the last three years. While Vietnam is not a large wine market, it was a growing one. We’ll see what happens.

67 Pall Mall plans Shanghai location

67 Pall Mall, a group of private members' clubs for wine lovers that has locations in London, Verbier, Singapore, Bordeaux and Beaune, announced on 20 June that they are accepting membership applications for their new Shanghai location. The club, scheduled to open in 2026, will be housed in a 100-year-old Grand Mansion building in Donghu Garden in the Xuhui District of Shanghai. The club plans to have 5,000 selections on its wine list as well as 1,000 wines by the glass.

That’s all for this episode of the wine news. There will be no newscast next Friday 4 July. I’ll see you on the 11^th. If you enjoy this newscast and would like to see it continue, please become a member of JancisRobinson.com. And if you have breaking news in your area, please email news@jancisrobinson.com.

This is a transcript of our weekly five-minute news broadcast, which you can watch below. You can also listen to it on The Wine News in 5 Podcast. If you enjoy this content and would like to see more like it, please become a member of our site and subscribe to our weekly newsletter.

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Samantha Cole-Johnson