Tariffs and terroir

Business Daily

BBC

News, Business

4.4 • 796 Ratings

🗓️ 11 May 2025

⏱️ 18 minutes

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Summary

We’re in the French winemaking region of Burgundy which last year sold 400 million dollars of wine to the United States. The US is the region’s biggest export market, but could import tariffs put paid to that?

On the other side of the Atlantic, you might think the winemakers of Oregon and California would be cracking open something special to celebrate. How is the prospect of American tariffs on European wine going down with the US competition?

Presented and produced by John Laurenson

(Picture: Vineyard worker, Élodie Bonet, in Burgundy, France.)

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to Business Daily with me, John Lawrenson.
0:04.6	Today we're in the French wine-making region of Burgundy
0:07.9	that is confronting an import tariff offensive
0:10.8	launched by US President Donald Trump.
0:13.5	Can I ask you if you're worried?
0:15.4	Yeah, sure, as everybody.
0:17.5	That's French wine and the Trump tariffs
0:19.6	in this episode of Business Daily.
0:25.5	Crouched in the cold mud under a thin spring rain, vineyard employee Elodie Bonnet snaps off shoots
0:33.1	with her fingers and pruning clippers. We are removing the shoots that are unwanted
0:40.2	because if we let them grow when we prune,
0:44.5	it's going to damage the vine.
0:46.7	And you want to remove them so it can put all its energy into the shoots
0:50.3	that you're interested in.
0:51.4	Exactly, the one with the flowers, that's going to become the grapes.
0:56.7	Can you see the grapes coming at all?
0:58.5	Yeah, we can. If you look here, this little bull here is really, really tiny.
1:04.9	Nile, thick, black, about a foot high. There are hundreds of vines in this plot,
1:09.7	and Elodie gives each one of them a lot of
1:12.1	attention. The variety of vine used to grow the grapes is one of the things that gives a particular
1:17.7	wine its particular taste. These ones are pinot noir, the emblematic varietal of burgundy reds.
1:24.3	How old are the vines in this field? These ones are 60 years old.
	...

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