Champagne Realism

It is easier to imagine the myth of sustainable Champagne than the death of a Polish harvest worker

Did you know “The Champagne vineyards are wholeheartedly committed to sustainable practices”? If you didn’t you’re not on the same mailing lists as me.

The Comité Champagne declares on its website “the Champagne industry is strongly committed…” to principles like “Carbon Footprint”, “Water Footprint”, “Biodiversity Footprint”, “Circular Economy”, and “Objective 100% Certified”.

According to its “Objective 100% Certified” The Comité declares/obfuscates [delete to taste]:

"Progress among everyone involved achieves more than the feats of a few". This is a saying that resonates meaningfully with the people of Champagne, who have always endeavoured to involve 100% of the sector in their continued drive for progress.

Well that’s nice.

I thought I’d check that statistic though. The one about “100% of the the sector”. There’s one group of people who don’t seem to be included in the “progress among everyone involved”.

If it’s not from the Champagne region it’s just Sparkling Exploitation

For several years now legal cases have been rumbling through the French courts. As The Times newspaper reported this week:

At least 14 champagne houses used grapes picked by illegal immigrants deprived of food, housed in insalubrious conditions and treated like slaves, a court has heard.

The cases involve…

the manager and two deputies at an agency¹ that employed pickers and supplied grapes to firms in the Champagne region. They are accused of human trafficking in connection with 57 African migrants

The migrants were told they would be paid €250 a week. Roughly the price of a bottle of La Grande Dame, from Veuve Clicquot, one of the Champagne houses that the Times reported had been receiving the grapes.

As it happens, the workers didn’t get anything like that. And many of them received no money at all. Instead they were,

…forced to sleep between ten and 15 to a room, using inflatable mattresses on gravel-covered ground. There were no showers and three toilets for them, which were blocked when inspectors arrived.

They worked from 6am to 8pm, received little water and only two meals a day — sandwiches — and were so hungry that some ate the grapes off the vines or potatoes found in neighbouring fields for sustenance, the court heard. When they complained, foremen threatened them with knives and tear gas.

Of course, the case is ongoing. And I’m careful to only report what The Times (and its lawyers) have previously reported². It may be the case that the agency involved and the French company that bought grapes from the agency will be found to be entirely innocent. And that the Champagne region has nothing to be concerned about. That in spite of the French Gendarmerie setting up a special police unit, the Gend’Viti, “to warn vineyard owners against conditions that do not comply with French employment law.” I’m sure that’s just an overreaction from The Gendarmerie.

But the testimony of the workers involved and reported in The Times involves certainly seems harrowing. And the testimonies - caveats above - are worth repeating here:

Djakaniyaou Kanoute, 44, said: “I never thought that the people who make champagne would house us in a place where animals would not feel good. Everything was dirty. We couldn’t wash and when we wanted to cook rice, we had to start a fire with wood because there was not even a camping stove.”

Doumbia Mamadou, 45, from the Ivory Coast, said: “We were badly treated, we didn’t eat. We couldn’t say anything. In short, we were treated like slaves.” In an interview with L’Est Éclair, the regional newspaper, he said: “We still haven’t received a single cent for all the work we did. What we experienced was really horrible. Frankly, it traumatised us. Now we want justice.”

'A principle is not a principle until it costs you money'

The great adman Bill Bernbach declared “A principle is not a principle until it costs you money”. As it happens, sustainability does not cost you money. As we’ll see, it makes you money. It is - ergo - not a principle.

Not having slaves in your vineyard costs money. Similarly not finding harvest workers lying dead lying between your vines costs money. That makes these things - ergo - principles.

The global sustainable luxury goods market is projected to grow from $67.2 billion in 2024 to $162.9 billion by 2034. That’s a CAGR³ of 9.1%.