Virus sparks bitter rift in France's champagne industry

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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.

"The growers want 8,500 kilogrammes 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. The Union des Maisons de Champagne 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 -- down 34 per cent from 2019.

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. 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."

 

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Here's an idea: sharpen the price. People will buy. I'd drink more Clicquot if it wasn't $85 a pop.

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