It is Catherine Bourson, vigneronne and elected for the region of Champagne-Ardenne for the far-right party, Front National, who has signed, and the same Mme Bourson participated in a small manifestation at the Place Royale in downtown Reims the other day.
Madame wants to pick more grapes to be able to produce more champagne, and she assures that her initiative is completely apolitical, says l'Union.
Wants more reserves
This year the official quota of grapes were 13.000 kilos per hectare. Ordained by the Ministry. Are there more berries, they must be left to end up as self service for the migrating birds.
Catherine Bourson is not the only winegrower, who wants to pick more grapes to stock them - that is the clear wine you make from them - as reserves. That leaves you with a bit of extra security for the next time you get the grosses gelées - the hard frost in spring, that sometimes destroy a big part of your potential.
Reserves, that will stay at their current level, since all grapes harvested in 2006 will be put into production straight away. Too bad, too sad, to leave grapes that could be used, according to some. One of them Mme Bourson.
Statistically there is hard and destructive springfrost once every 10 years., My guess is that it will occur more and more rarely with the warming, that is already quite visibly here with more millésime-vintages than ever the last decade and the disease esca spreading more frequently.
Dollars in the eyes
I suppose that Mme and cie has more than one longing eye glued to the almost exponentially increased export of more than eigth percent in the first six month of 2006. The market of champagne is galloping, the limit infinitely far away, the world wants bubbles. So it seems.
And shame on he - or she - who would want to pass a possible deal on bubbles on to producers from countries such as the USA, Argentina and Australia. According to the ad they "make use of our Methode Champenoise and our reputation".
Not everybody agrees with the idea of a higher quota.
"15.000 kilo, pour quoi faire?" asks the communist trade union, CGT, in l'Union. They answer themselves that the market is not ready for 400 million bottles of champagne, which is the amount, you are able to produce from a quota of 15.000 kiloes of grapes per hectare.
Also in newspapers and magazines the different spokesmen of the industry in generel assert a point of view like "let's relax a bit, play it nice and easy". Let's take care of our current market, rather than destroying it by putting a lot more out with the risk of big disaster.
At this point the chairmen like to make readers remember the last time of crises in Champagne back in the early 1990'ies, where the price per bottle dropped significantly to be able to sell just about anything at all. Champagne has certainly not always experienced golden days. In fact the major part of the history of this region it has been an extremely hard job with only small incomes to grow grapes. Maybe this is also why it is so hard for many winegrowers to see the last grapes left to rot.
In 2005 307,5 million bottles of champagne were sold worldwide.
På dansk
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