Jane Anson
‘All of a sudden, the Bordeaux merchants and château owners are nervous’
Acolumn I wrote back in June 2016 said that Bordeaux felt like a good place to be after the Brexit vote, because the region’s 900 years of shared history with England somehow cushioned the blow a little. It feels less comfortable now, with all the noises coming from the UK government suggesting that trade really is going to get significantly more difficult between Britain and Europe as of January 2021.
All of a sudden none of this is theoretical, and the Bordeaux merchants and château owners, who for the past three years have been pretty confident that economic sense will win out, are nervous. You can’t blame them. They have already had to deal with extreme disruption in their other three significant export markets of the US, Hong Kong and China, and the thought that the UK could follow is ramping up the stress.
Recent trade figures showed that, since the introduction late last year of 25% tariffs on wine imports to the US from certain EU countries, trade of Bordeaux wine heading to America was 46% lower in November 2019 compared to November 2018. Figures like that mean that the increasingly combative noises coming from the British government are the last thing Bordeaux needs.
The UK wine trade is busy urging
European wine producers to join their British counterparts in lobbying MPs and the EU to deliver the most favourable post-Brexit trading environment. It’s already happening, I can assure you, through regular exchanges with politicians such as Nathalie Delattre, senator for the Bordeaux region and member of the national Vines & Wine panel.
‘We are already collateral damage in the 15-year trade fight between Airbus and Boeing,’ négociant and former CIVB Bordeaux wine bureau president Allan Sichel told me recently. ‘We don’t want to be in the same position all over again, and are making politicians very aware of the importance of the UK market for French wines generally and Bordeaux wines in particular. We export all over the world and are used to filling out forms, but it is essential that we remain as close to free trade as possible’.
Recent years have seen the UK maintain its volume and value imports from Bordeaux as other markets shrink – it’s a trade that is just as important for British merchants as it is for the French producers and négociants. In 2018, the value of UK exports of Bordeaux wine was greater than the value of Bordeaux wine brought into the country, as Britain continues to be wine merchant to the world – a role it is naturally keen to maintain.
But trade is just one part of what we are losing, and what strikes me most, as I watch the headlines with growing alarm, is that I’m grateful. Freedom of movement allowed me to move to Bordeaux in 2003 with my husband and six-month-old daughter, and to take a chance. It allowed me slowly to increase my understanding of Bordeaux wine, and to fall in love with this beautiful region, without having a plan first.
I had no full-time job waiting for me in Bordeaux, nobody sponsoring my visa, and honestly it didn’t feel like that much more of a disruptive move than if I’d been going to Edinburgh or Dublin. We didn’t even have to register with our local town hall on arrival.
Next month I’m publishing Inside Bordeaux, a 500,000-word book on Bordeaux wines and terroirs that would have been impossible to write had I not been living here for 16 years, slowly getting to understand what makes this region such a stubborn entry on the world’s greatest wine lists.
I’m already sorry that the next British journalist with a desire to unpick the geography, politics, patience, ambition and enquiry that goes into their favourite bottles of wine, and then to share their findings with other wine lovers, is going to find it much more difficult to achieve.