Lots of news this week, including the announcement that European wine production was down seven percent in 2023, according to the EU's agricultural unions Copa-Cogeca. France leads the big three in volume terms with both Italy and Spain seeing major drops in yield compared to last year.
We also heard that Swiss luxury glassware group Lalique had taken over its CEO (Silvio Denz)'s 75-percent share of the Sauternes estate, Château Lafaurie-Peyraguey. According to La Revue du Vin de France, the move is part of a recapitalization process within the Lalique group. The latter already owns the château's hotel-restaurant operation. Denz acquired the estate in 2014.
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Still in Bordeaux, Biba magazine this week cited the town's Cité du Vin wine tourism spot as France's fourth most disappointing destination. The reason, according to its survey, was that tours "concentrated mainly the history and culture of wine rather than tasting it". Nearly a third of surveyed visitors were less than impressed by the visitor center.
In other news, international fliers on Air Algérie will no longer be able to partake of a glass of wine on flights. According to the Visa-Algerie website, the airline stopped serving wine, reportedly as part of a cost-cutting drive while the website pointed to social media comments blaming "conservatives", "populists" and "Islamicism". The airline used to pour wines produced by the nationally owned Sotravit wine company.
In lighter news, given that we have reached the 11th month of the year, we would like to take the moment to remind (or warn, depending on your outlook), readers that Beaujolais Nouveau day is on Thursday 16 – less than two weeks away.
Meanwhile, here are some of the headlines you might have missed this week:
Bordeaux campaigner set to appeal
Valérie Murat, a Bordeaux-based anti-pesticide campaigner and head of the "Alerte aux Toxiques" (ATT) pressure group, looks set to continue her controversial crusade, it was announced this week.
Murat, who had been found guilty of "dénigration" (a form of defamation) by a Bordeaux court two years ago (see Bordeaux Whistleblower Denied Appeal) had been told she could only appeal the ruling once she had paid an initial fine of €125,000 ($143,000). According to French ecological news website Vert this week, Murat and ATT have finally amassed the sum, primarily through the Gofundme crowdfunding website.
The case was brought against Murat back in 2020 after, via the ATT, she published lab analyses showing 22 wines (of which 19 were from Bordeaux) from a range of quality levels with HVE ("Haute Valeur Environmentale", or High Environmental Value) certification contained pesticide residues. However, "the presence of pesticide residues in the 22 bottles of wine tested did not exceed the legal thresholds," said Vert.
The Bordeaux wine trade body (the CIVB) along with 25 other plaintiffs immediately took Murat and ATT to court and in February 2021, the Libourne district court found that ATT was guilty of "dénigrement collectif" (collective disparagement) of Bordeaux wines.
"Defamation is closely regulated in order to guarantee freedom of speech," Murat's defence lawyer, Bruno Bouyer, told French ecology website Reporterre. "Particularly when it comes to the truth, which allows an acquittal if the defense proves the truth of the facts. Disparagement does not meet any of these rules."
According to Murat, the judgement had not focused on the presence of chemicals in the wines rather that the release of her findings had "sullied [the image of] Bordeaux wines with deliberately anxiety-provoking content". She was ordered to pay the attendant fine prior to making any move to appeal the verdict.
The case remains controversial in France, with numerous wine industry figures on both sides of the debate, which, for the past two years, has been on pause. Supporters of Murat's whistleblowing campaign saw the judgement as a means of silencing the campaigner.
French wine writer Antonin Iommi-Amunategui slammed the judgement as "pure greenwashing". He accused the CIVB and its co-plaintiffs of "an attempt to silence her [...] And they have succeeded, which is intolerable".
According to Reporterre, Murat will appeal the "disparagement" verdict and argue for a straight defamation case to be heard. The case is due to be lodged with the Bordeaux appeals court before the end of 2024.
It is also possible that the tide of judicial opinion in France has turned in Murat's favor in recent years. As pointed out by Reporterre, a very similar recent case in the meat industry which saw the Yuka consumer app (which alerts consumers to the presence of additives – and in this case, nitrates in, ham, bacon, sausages, saucisson and the like) initially handed three disparagement verdicts in 2021 after the French meat lobby took exception to the initiative.
Yuka won its appeals case in December last year when, in short, it was found to be acting in the public interest.
Murat, whose winegrower father died in 2012 from bronchopulmonary cancer (recognised as an occupational disease), looks set to re-ignite the much-needed debate in the wine industry once again.
Medal-winning wine sparks controversy
Tensions are running high in northern Argentina this week after a wine that won a Gran Oro award (the equivalent of a double gold) at the 35th Cata de Vinos de San Juan tasting of San Juan wines was revealed to have been produced in neighboring Mendoza. The wine, the Fuego Blanco Flinstone 2021 Cabernet Franc, from the Familia Millán winery in Mendoza caused the upset due to not having "San Juan" on its label.
According to regional newspaper Tiempo de San Juan, as the wine is made out-of-region, it cannot bear the "San Juan" title. Instead, the offending label proclaims "Pedernal - Cuyo" (the former relating to the Pedernal Valley subregion, the latter to the location of the winery in Lujan de Cuyo, Mendoza).
The newspaper said that the wine caused such "an unexpected commotion" that the regional winemakers' body had to issue a strongly-worded statement in defence of both the tasting and the offending wine's presence therein.
"I am concerned about the lack of knowledge among businessowners and colleagues [around the selection criteria]," Pedro Pelegrina, the president of the region's winemakers' council, said in a statement.
"I am even more concerned about the lack of knowledge around our National Tasting," he continued, "which has been carried out for 35 years and is unique in this country, adjusted to the INV [Instituto Nacional de Vitivinicultura – Argentina's national wine body] standards, and which complies with international [International Organisation of Vine and Wine] standards."
"The INV rule says that when grapes from a San Juan valley with Geographical Indication are made in a winery outside of San Juan, it can display the name of the Valley (Pedernal) but it cannot say San Juan, because it was not made in the same place as the grapes," he added. "Yes, you can say Cuyo, because it is the place that contains both the winery and the grapes."
So there.
Carole Bouquet wine in environmental project
Famed French actor Carole Bouquet is donating bottles of her ultra-rare Passito di Pantelleria wine in exchange for donations of over €1000 ($1070) to a marine habitat rehabilitation project off the coast of the Mediterranean island. Bouquet, who lives on the island and whose estate covers almost 15 hectares (37 acres), is giving away her Sangue d'Oro sweet wine to support the Pure Ocean initiative.
Pure Ocean is working to replant sea grass, sponges and sea fans across an area of 200 square meters on the sea bed off the island. According to French magazine Le Journal des Femmes, the aim of the project, dubbed the Panther Project, is to establish a marine reserve using cutting-edge technology – 3D photogrammetry – to monitor progress.
According to Pure Ocean, the marine habitat in the region has been severely damaged by high summer recreational fishing pressure and traditional fishing.
"The state of degradation is such that marine ecosystems are also losing resilience in the face of climate change and invasive species," says the organization on its Panther Project page.
There is a time – and stock – limit, however, on Bouquet's offer.
"If it's a dream of yours to taste Carole Bouquet's production, you have until 31 December 2023 to get a bottle," said the magazine. Furthermore, stocks are limited: only around 5000 bottles of Sangue d'Oro are produced annually.
Spanish wine to get €91.6 million in subsidies
The Spanish government will pay out €91.6 million ($97.2 million) to the wine sector across the next two years, it was announced at a meeting last Monday between government representatives and the country's administrative regions.
The meeting, chaired by the Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (MAPA), Luis Planas, rubber stamped funds to subsidize 364 financial aid applications presented in the first round of the country's so-called "Wine Sector Intervention program", which will run into 2024.
The funding rounds are split across the 2024 and 2025 financial years, with €68.7 million ($72.9 million) due in the first round and another €22.8 million ($24.2 million) in the second.According to Spanish agricultural news agency Efeagro, the aid programme is "intended for investments in processing facilities and wine infrastructure, as well as in marketing initiatives and devices".
Vinovalie slowly up and running after IT hack
Readers of last week's news roundup will remember the shocking story of major French wine producer Vinovalie being paralyzed by a cyber attack on the night of 24-25 October. Hackers hit the South West France cooperative (one of the country's largest with 190 employees and an annual turnover of nearly €50 million), blocking access to its IT systems and demanding a ransom of $450,000 (not €450,000, as reported last weekend) to be paid within seven days.
This week, local news reports stated the company had slowly got its systems up and running. IT teams looking into the wine producer's systems were able to restart the bottling line and despatch operations on Monday.
"Despatchers now have access to the location of ordered products, how many boxes need to be placed on pallets, etc." said local newspaper La Depeche. "The end-of-month employee payroll software was also recovered."
It still remains to be seen whether or not other areas of the IT system can be retrieved with Vinovalie's accounts and operations files (harvest declarations, and so on) still inaccessible. Delivery and invoicing of customers have been given priority.
“[Our] customers have been kind when given the reason for our delay," the head of the coop, Jacques Tranier, told the paper. Part of the company's resilience (it has refused to pay the ransom, which was due on Thursday) is due to having already been a victim.
“We were hit last year," said Tranier. "It took us three or four days to recover. But we took advantage of this first attack to check our processes, and extending the copies of our databases. We tripled the number of backup days.”
However, there appears to be very little information available as to the virus through which the company was attacked.
“It is a new virus, which has not been documented at a national level," Tranier added. "We’re being used as guinea pigs.”
In the interim, employees have been placed on leave or hours in lieu to avoid recourse to technical unemployment and the company is preparing to restart 150 computers, change all the hard drives, wipe and reset the automated robots in the bottling line – all actions which depend on third party organisations.
"We had a knot in our stomach but we will get through it,” Tranier told La Depeche. “Everyone showed resilience, no one panicked."
The paper said that, "while Vinovalie had not yet come out of the tunnel, it could see the light at the end of it".
Ukraine takes stock of tough 2023 vintage
While some of their number are being co-opted by disgruntled French vignerons to go around breaking wine writers' legs, Ukrainian winemakers otherwise faced another tough vintage at home, this year with a raft of issues added to the challenges of the ongoing war with Russia.
According to French wine news website Vitisphere, Ukrainian viticulturists also had major issues with mildew this year (the disease ravaged parts of France, notably Bordeaux, over the growing season). This was exacerbated by continued lack of labor, inflation and a lack of dry goods and raw materials have all made for another tough season on top of the ever-present conflict in the country.
“We felt a lack of manpower," Kostiantyn Tintulov, the commercial director of the TM Villa Tinta estate in Oksamytne, in the southwestern corner of the country, told the publication. "In previous years we had around 150 to 250 seasonal pickers, but this year we only had 80 and it was difficult to find them."
"[In] 2022 our region did not directly feel the impact of the war, [but] now the Shaheds [Iranian-made Russian drones] are flying right above our cellar," he added.
Despite the challenging vintage, producers remain upbeat.
“What is good is the interest in our wines from abroad," co-owner and winemaker of Frumushika-Nova near Odessa, Vladimir Palariev, told Vitisphere. "Many countries support Ukraine and order our wines. We are very grateful to them."
