In the ancestral vineyards of Sancerre in the Loire Valley, France, Taylor Swift seemed like a distant figure. “I knew that she was a world-famous singer,” said Laurent Saget, whose family started making wines towards the end of the 18th century. “But I certainly didn’t know all her songs.”
Now, though, Saget is brushing up on The Fate of Ophelia, Shake It Off and other hits after Swift was filmed with a bottle from his Domaine de Terres Blanches vineyard. In truth, there was no more than a fleeting and somewhat hazy image of the white Sancerre in Disney’s six-part documentary on her, The End of an Era. But her fans soon identified what they invariably described as “Taylor’s favourite wine”, and explained in endless social media posts where to buy it.
Many did. Saget said Total Wine & More, the retailer that distributes his wines in the US, told him it had recorded a fivefold increase in sales of Terres Blanches after the documentary, compared with the same period last year.
Swift does not just limit herself to white wine
Saget’s vineyard was closed at the time but discovered the meaning of Swiftonomics, as the singer’s impact on local and world economies has been dubbed, when it reopened after the festive season. French journalists were lining up to interview him and there was a surge in demand for wines direct from the vineyard at a usually quiet time of year.
It has all come as something of a surprise to Saget, 40, who had other things on his mind when an acquaintance sent him a screen grab of his bottle in the documentary. “It was the day we were shutting up for Christmas,” he said. “When I saw the wine in the documentary, I thought to myself, ‘Something is going to happen’, but I didn’t measure its impact.
“It’s crazy. I don’t know how long [Swift] has had this aura, but it’s certainly big.”
He is not the first person to notice this. Michigan University, for instance, estimated that Swift’s six concerts in Singapore in March 2024 helped to ensure that the country’s growth was 0.2 per cent higher than initial government forecasts. Some analysts, including the chief economist at Deutsche Bank, also said her tour affected the UK inflation rate when she played at Wembley a few months later.
Swift at Wembley during her Eras Tour in 2024
GARETH CATTERMOLE/TAS24/GETTY IMAGES
The pop star’s overall impact on the economy of Sancerre may be more limited. She has given the area in general, and Saget in particular, an unexpected public relations boost that may lead to a rise in prices, but overall sales are unlikely to increase.
Sancerre is already a notable success story in a French wine industry otherwise engulfed by crisis. Although heavy southern reds are shunned by modern consumers, its fresh and fruity whites correspond to contemporary tastes, and demand is already outstripping supply. There is little scope for expansion, no matter how many Swifties want to buy its bottles. “They want more, but we will not give them more. That’s not what we do,” Saget said.
Laurent Saget has no intention of changing his winemaking habits
He said the 3,025 hectares officially classified as Sancerre were covered in vines and its 285 or so winemakers could not plant more. Saget, the ninth generation of his family in the winemaking business, with six vineyards to his name, said production was higher in his father’s day but had been hit by climate change in recent years with unseasonal frosts and outbreaks of downy mildew.
The Terres Blanches vineyard makes about 100,000 bottles a year and about 10,000 to 15,000 are exported to the US. They sell for between €30 and €40 in France, and can be drunk as an aperitif or with a warm goats’ cheese salad, Saget said.
Despite the Swift-induced frenzy he has no intention of changing his habits. Bottles will be left to age in his cellars and none will be rushed to market.
“At the end of the year, I’ll probably have sold just the same amount of bottles,” he said, adding that the consequence of Swiftonomics for his own vineyard was a run on the wines now and the risk of a shortage later.
Comment: And I thought I was a diehard fan…
Occasionally you read news articles in which an intelligence agency shares a puzzle with the public, offering job opportunities to anyone who solves it (Keiran Southern writes). Taylor Swift’s fans could put the CIA and GCHQ to shame.
I thought I was a diehard Swifty until I met the real devotees while covering the Eras Tour. These fans — many of them teenage girls — pore over every aspect of their idol’s music and iconography, desperate for any clue as to what is coming next.
They obsess over the tiniest detail, pointing out images in the background of Instagram posts or the colour of Swift’s nail varnish. That the most dedicated made a beeline for a wine that made only a fleeting appearance in a recent documentary does not surprise me.
No doubt the news will please the pop titan, who loves how her followers spend ages analysing her material like codebreakers during war time. I’m happy to stick to the music and leave the diehard Swifties to cryptography.
Dining and Cooking