Winemakers who find Trump’s tariffs hard to swallow

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

Cutting in cold mud under a thin spring rain, an employee of the vineyard élodie bonet tears away unwanted vine shoots with fingers and trimming haircuts.

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

I let Elodi work on the ranks of the vines and go to the house and the winery in the Burgundy village of Morei-Sennis, where I meet with the owner and winemaker Cecil Tremblai.

She takes me down to her basement to taste some of her valuable red wines, standing among oak barrels and old bottles of labels tired of mold and age.

They have names on them that make wine lovers weaken in the knees-Nuits-Saint-georges, Echezeaux, Vosne-Romanée, Clos-Vougeot and Chapelle-Chambertin.

D -Ja Tremblay sells over half of its wine abroad, under the name Domaine Cecile Tremblay.

“For the United States, it’s about 10% of production; it’s a big production for me!” She says.

After threatening a 200% alcohol mark -up from Europe, Donald Trump imposed a 20% tariff at virtually all European Union products on April 5.

Four days later, it decreased to 10%, with the threat increasing it to 20% again in July, depending on how trade negotiations are diverging. And now Trump threatens a future 50% tariff for all EU goods.

I ask G -ja Tremblai if he is worried. “Yes, for sure,” she says, “Like everyone.”

But this is all she will say about it. Currently, French winemakers are going on egg shells, fearing that they do not say anything that can make the situation worse.

Maybe their representatives will be more forthcoming? I get in my car and get to one of its neighbors – Francois Labet. He is the president of the Burgundy Wine Council, which is 3,500 winemakers in this region.

“The US is the largest export market for the whole region. Definitely,” he tells me. “They are the largest in volume and the largest in value.”

And until the re -election of Donald Trump, the US market was flourishing. While French wines and spirits global exports fell 4% last yearBordeaux wines in the United States have risen sharply.

In volumetric conditions, There was 16% From 2024 to 20.9 million bottles. It cost 370 million euros (€ 415 million; £ 312 million) in revenue, 26.2% higher than in 2023.

Labet says the United States represented about a quarter of Burgundy’s wine exports last year.

The reputation of Burgundy abroad is mainly with its red wines made from the famous Pinot Noir grapes. In fact, in the English -language world, Burgundy is not as much wine as color.

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

They are made mainly from Chardonnay’s grapes. Chablis, one of the most famous examples, is extremely popular in the United States.

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

All this is useful for Bordeaux, because while the overall consumption of red wine simply continues to descend, White behaves firmly, and sparkling goes up.

Also, the reds who leave Bordeaux, according to d -Labet, dear users are increasingly wanting, as they are usually easier than the red ones than the New World.

“The interesting thing is to see that there is a strong venture of what we call the big reds made in the US. Wines with a lot of alcohol aged in a new tree.”

The smaller sun and the lower temperatures in Bordeaux, even in climate change, means less sugar in the grapes and a slower alcohol content.

Labet remembers when, for 18 months, Donald Trump has hit European wine with a 25% import tariff during an airline dispute.

“We were hostage to this situation and that really affected our sales for the United States. We had a decline of about 50% of our exports to the United States.”

As for the current 10% Trump tariff, it predicts that French wine producers and US traders will divide the price of the new import duty between them to maintain sales.

But what would be the impact if Trump decided to increase the tariff for all European Union exports to 20%as he threatened to do? “We will go back to the situation in 2019, in which the market was almost stopped,” says G -n Labet.

For French wines in general, things can be even worse.

“When President Trump has fulfilled the duties to import by 25% in one and a half years of his first term, we lost about $ 600 million (£ 450 million) very quickly,” says Jerome Bauer, president of the French National Confederation of Wines and Spirits.

“But then the champagne was not included and they were neither stronger than 14 degrees alcohol. So today you can see the scale of the threat.”

The decision that G -n Bauer supports is free trade. No tariffs. But you would expect him to say this, given that France and Europe run a large trade surplus with the United States when it comes to guilt and spirits.

Perhaps more surprisingly, the opinion of his American competitors in California and Oregon, who, maybe think, would open something a little special to celebrate.

“This seems terrible from our point of view. We don’t like a single bit,” says Rex Stolz, Vice-President of Vintners Valley Vintle Industry Relations, which represents 540 wineries in the sunny slopes of the most famous wine region in California.

“Wine is an international product. Even here, in the Napa Valley, our wineries mostly receive their bark from Portugal and their oak barrels, a key component in wine production, from France.

G -N Stolz adds: “They are already expensive and the potential is that they will become more expensive.”

Commercial wars also decrease in both directions. He says the tariffs declared against Canada have a detrimental effect on wine exports to the United States.

“Canada is the most important export market for California wines and one of the best export markets for the wines of the Napa Valley. There are currently Zero Napa Valley Wines in the shelves of stores in Canada.

“They have removed all American alcoholic beverages from their store shelves!”

D -Natiz adds: “We just want to compete with a uniform game with our friends and neighbors around the world. This is our request and that is our hope.”