A German supermarket has casued outrage in France over how cheap it is selling French wine.
© Pinacol/Pixabay | Aldi might have sharp prices, but its public relations needs some attention.
This week, the wine world mourned the passing of Ruinart’s much-loved chef de cave, Frédéric Panaïotis, with numerous people and publications paying tribute to the energetic winemaker.
Those of a more academic persuasion filled their time thumbing through this year’s Masters of Wine exam questions and wine lineups, all while the US hogged much of the continued wider press attention over ICE Immigration Control raids, seizing workers across the country, all alongside the continued will-they-wont-they saga of trade tariffs.
We also learned that US singer Norah Jones is launching her own range of wines.
Today sees the final day of Bordeaux’s four-day long Fête du Vin wine festival, while this week we learned (though the North American qualifiers) that the iconic Burgundy pile that is the Château du Clos de Vougeot is once again set to host the Oeuf en Meurette (eggs in red wine sauce) World Championships this October.
Here are some other wine news headlines from the last seven days:
Aldi draws growers’ fury
European supermarket chain Aldi found itself at the receiving end of winegrower fury across France this week after ill-judged comments from a wine buyer for the chain.
Aldi stores from the Rhône to Bordeaux were beseiged by protesting growers after the supermarket’s national wine, beer and spirits buyer, Roger Anthony, told French wine news website Vitisphere on 14 June that, at €1.99 a bottle, “a Bordeaux or a Côtes du Rhône still made [the growers] money”.
Anthony went on to state “we respect our growers”, sparking fury in local viticultural circles.
“It’s important to remember that selling bottles of Bordeaux at less than €3 – which is under the cost of production – puts thousands of Bordeaux winegrowers in danger,” said the local Young Farmers and FDSEA agricultural unions in a joint statement to local newspaper Sud-Ouest.
The Inter Rhône trade body even called the statement “profoundly disrespectful” in a press release issued on Wednesday.
“These comments are all the more shocking as they directly contradict the principles of the Egalim law, which aims to guarantee a fair distribution of value in the food chain, by ensuring fair remuneration for producers,” it said.
Protests flared up in the two regions with growers dumping vines and hanging out banners in front of Aldi stores in Langon, Saint-André-de-Cubzac and Blaye (all in the wider Bordeaux region) on Wednesday.
There were almost identical scenes in the Rhône, where, according to regional radio station FranceBleu, “tons” of vine feet were dumped on the steps of the Aldi store in Bagnols-sur-Cèze, near Châteauneuf-du-Pape. The latter store has been a magnet for anti-supermarket protests in the last 12 months (see the introduction to France Fears Return of Wine Tariffs and “Rhône protestors to the rescue” in French Wine Protests Continue from November last year).
“We dumped two or three tons of vines, I reckon,” vice-president of the Gard chapter of the Young Farmers union told the radio station. “Those vines are vines that didn’t make us money.”
Aldi backtracked on its comments later in the week.
“We definitely communicated very poorly, it’s our fault” the purchasing head of Aldi France, Benoît Clerc, told Vitisphere on Thursday. The online news outlet also pointed out that, while Aldi had committed to not going lower than €1.99 in its pricing, other supermarkets had gone below this.
Clerc also claimed that is was supply and demand issues that underpinned some of the low pricing seen on the wine shelves.
“Looking at the lowest prices, these are unfortunately linked to overproduction versus consumption,” he said. “As long as there is no such balance, there will inevitably be people who will not succeed, that is absolutely obvious. We are only a very small part of the equation.”
Clerc underlined that there were plenty of estates and wine merchants whose cellars were full.
“If they are unable to sell by the next harvest, they will have major difficulties (they already have some),” he added. “It is not a question of price at the start: it is overproduction that leads to prices and not the other way around. This is the order in which things happen.”
Free wine for Fathers’ Day
Shoppers in the Maipú region of Mendoza, Argentina were handed an extra Fathers’ Day gift last weekend, courtesy of the regional council: a bottle of wine. In all, 1080 bottles of Maipú wine were given out to those who had spent more than 20,000 pesos (around $20) on Fathers’ Day gifts and purchases in local shops.
The initiative was part of a push dubbed “I buy in Maipú”, that seeks to increase commerce and support the development of businesses in the local area. Shoppers could claim their bottle of wine if they showed a receipt of a purchase from a local business while the scheme was in operation.
“In total, 1080 bottles of wine were redeemed, with an average ticket value of around 50,000 pesos (around $40) per gift for Dad,” said local newspaper Los Andes. “Each person was entitled to one bottle of wine per ticket, so it’s estimated that more than 50 million pesos [around $43,000] were spent on the holiday.”
Hail hits Bordeaux and Burgundy
Going into last weekend, storms pounded French vineyards, particularly in Bordeaux and isolated parts of Burgundy with hail damage reported in Entre-deux-Mers, the Graves and sectors of Crémant de Bourgogne production in the very north of the Côte d’Or department.
According to French wine news website Vitisphere, heavy rain, high winds a hail battered vineyards around Châtillon-sur-Seine causing damage to around 400 hectares (990 acres) of vineyard. This northern sector of Burgundy is primarily known for producing the sparkling Crémant de Bourgogne and is only just south of the southern Champagne vineyards around Bar-sur-Seine (the so-called Côte des Bar subregion).
“Around 30 percent of the 400 hectares hit with varying degrees of damage,” said the site.
One producer – Domaine Bouhélier – lost all of its two hectares destined for Crémant de Bourgogne production.
Further south, in Burgundy’s heartland, the storm provoked mudslides in the vineyards of Aloxe-Corton and Pernand-Vergelesses, although the damage to vines is reportedly limited.
Over in Bordeaux, Entre-deux-Mers and parts of the Graves south of Bordeaux city also received hail damage (with Vitisphere also indicating reports of isolated damage in the Médoc and the Côtes-de-Bourg). For some, in Entre-deux-Mers in particular, the damage was too much to take.
“It’s too early to too if crop losses are at 100 percent,” Amandine Nouriega of Maison Berneuil in Porte-de-Benage, just north of Cadillac, told the publication. “Even if 20 percent of the yield can be saved, the money invested will never be covered. It will cost me too much to try to produce. I can’t afford it in receivership.”
Vitisphere said Nouriega could not face another poor harvest, her vines having been frosted in 2021 and 2022 and suffered under considerable mildew pressure in 2023 and 2024.
Despite the recent run of bad weather, the meteorological situation is due to improve across the country, with settled, warm weather now forecast for some time.
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