Winemakers who are in Trump’s tariffs are hard to swallow

Burgundy is one of the most prestigious wine regions in France and the US is its largest export market. But now Donald Trump’s tariffs are threatening the cost of European wine from the US market.

A Vineyal employee who crouched down in cold dirt in a thin spring rain, planting unwanted shoots with a vine with his fingers and cutting chippers.

“We want the vine to put all its energy into the shoots that have flowers where the grapes will grow,” she explains.

I leave Halad, working on the rows of the vine, and I go to the house and winery in the village of Burgundy Sea-Sent-Dennis, where I meet the owner and winemaker Cecil Trambla.

She leads me to her cellar to try some of her revered red wines, which stand among oak barrels and old bottles with labels, translated mold and age.

They have names that make fans of wine faint-nuits-SAINT-GORGES, Echezeaux, Vosne-Romanée, Clos-Vougeot and Chapelle-Chambertin.

Ms Trembla sells more than half of her wine abroad called Domaine Cecile Tremblay.

“For the US it’s about 10% production; for me it is a great production!” she says.

Threatening 200% of alcohol from Europe, on April 5, Donald Trump introduced a 20% tariff for virtually all European Union products.

Four days later, he downgraded it to 10%, with the threat that in July he rose to 20%again, depending on how trade talks were excluded. And now Trump is threatening the future tariff of 50% for all EU goods.

I ask Ms Trembla, or she is worried. “Yes, I am sure,” she says, “like everything.”

But that’s all she will say on the matter. At this point, the French winemakers go through the eggshells, afraid to say something that can worsen the situation.

Perhaps their representatives will be more future? I get into the car and go to one of the neighbors – Francois Labet. He is the president of the wine council of Burgundy, representing 3,500 winemakers of the region.

“The US is the largest export market for the whole region. Of course,” he says to me. “They are the biggest volume and the biggest price.”

And until Donald Trump’s re -election, the US market has not flourished. While French Wines and Spirits Global Export Last year fell by 4%Sales of burgundy wines in the United States have increased dramatically.

In volume, Were 16% From 2024 to 20.9 million bottles. It cost 370 million euros ($ 415 million.

Mr. Labet states that in the US last year about a quarter of Burgundy’s wines.

The reputation of Burgundy abroad is mostly for its red wines, which are made from the famous pine naar grape. Indeed, in the English-speaking world, the burgundy is not so much wine as color.

The French word for the same color – burgundy; Showing that they know more about their wine because while the burgundy wines are mostly red, two -thirds of the burgundy are actually white.

This is preferably made of Chardon’s grapes. Chablis, one of the most famous examples, is very popular in the US.

Burgundy also produces an increasingly successful sparkling wine called Crémant de Bourgogne, and a small amount of pink.

All this is good for Burgundy, because, while total red wine consumption just goes down, the white keeps hard, and the sparkling goes up.

In addition, the red that come out of Burgundy, according to Mr. Labet, are more and more consumers, because they are usually easier than the new world.

“It is interesting to see what there is a strong debris that we call big red, made in the US.

Less sun and smaller temperatures in the burgundy, even with climate change, means less sugar in the grapes and reduce alcohol content.

Mr. Labet recalls when Donald Trump struck European wine with 25% import tariff during the 18 months of his first presidency.

“We were hostage to this situation and it really affected our sales in the US. We had a drop about 50% of our US exports.”

As for the current tariff by 10% Trump, it predicts that French wine producers and US traders share the cost of new imports between them to retain sales.

But what will be the impact if Trump decides to increase the tariff for the entire exports of the European Union to 20%as he threatened? “We will return to the 2019 situation when the market was almost stopped,” says Mr. Labet.

For French wines, everything can be even worse.

“When President Trump has collected import duties for 25% for a year and a half of his first mandate, we lost about £ 600 million very quickly,” says Jerome Bauer, President of French national wines and confederation of alcoholic beverages.

“But then the champagne was not included, and they were not guilty than 14 degrees alcohol. So you can see the scale of the threat today.”

Mr. Bauer’s decision supports free trade. No tariffs. But you expect it to say that, given that France and Europe work with the US a big trading excess when it comes to guilt and perfume.

Perhaps more amazing is the opinion of his American competitors in California and Oregon, who may think will open something special to celebrate.

“It looks awful from our point of view. We don’t like it,” says Rex Stoltz, vice president on branching in Vintners Vintners NAPA, which is 540 winers on the sun’s slopes of the most famous wine region in California.

“Wine is an international product. Even here, in the Napami Valley, our winers first receive their cork from Portugal, and their oak barrels, a key component in winemaking, from France.

Mr. Stolts adds: “They are already expensive, and the potential is that they will be more expensive.”

Also, trade wars have reduced both ways. He says tariffs announced against Canada have a devastating effect on US wine exports.

“Canada is the most important export market for California’s wines, and one of the best export markets of the Valley Valley. Now there are zero wines on the stores in Canada.

“They removed all American alcohol products from the store shelves!”

Mr. Stoltz adds: “We just want to fight on equal terms with our friends and neighbors all over the world. This is our question, and this is our hope.”