France’s champagne workers are being forced to pick grapes under scorching heat and living in makeshift quarters described as living “hell”.
A string of investigations have alleged that some of the grapes that end up in even some of the top champagne bottles are picked by victims of “modern-day slavery”.
Producers are now gearing up for a human trafficking case involving pickers that promises to rock the land of bubbly when it opens next spring.
While the work is back-breaking, grape-picking long had a vaguely romantic ring to it with pickers traditionally housed in chateau dormitories and treated to decent food and wine into the bargain.
However, the reputation of the famed winemakers took a massive knock when reports emerged of migrant workers living in appalling conditions and other labour violations.
A new investigation has also uncovered squalid housing where workers, undocumented migrants from Senegal, Mali, Mauritania, Guinea and Gambia, were kept in sordid conditions before working in the vineyards.
Authorities found the hungry, exhausted workers last year when conducting a routine check in Nesle-la-Reposte, a village in the Marne Valley.
They discovered “makeshift bedding, dilapidation, unsanitary conditions, lack of cleaning and disinfection, the disgusting state of toilets, sanitary facilities and common areas [and] the accumulation of faecal matter in the sanitary facilities”, according to a report from the prefectural decree.
Returning to the abandoned site in the village next to vineyards, two of the workers told France 2’s Complément d’enquête it was “hell, frankly”. They were paid €80 a day, undeclared, to fill 200 baskets of grapes. This meant working days of over 14 hours, without a break, most of the time under a blazing sun.
A video shot on one worker’s smartphone showed the only meal of the day: a weevilled bowl of rice eaten standing up, around camping tables. Inside, bare electric cables were exposed on the roof of the shower, posing the risk of electrocution.
Most winegrowers pay subcontractors to provide and look after the pickers.
“Every morning between 5 and 6am”, these subcontractors came to collect the pickers, loading them into three vans with no air-conditioning “like animals”.
In one tense scene caught on camera, several exhausted grape-pickers asked to be paid so that they could go home. But their boss and her husband, a couple from Kazakhstan, flatly refused to pay anyone who left before the end of the harvest.
Tipped off by neighbours, local police and labour inspectors intervened, ordering the administrative closure of the accommodation.
When identified and questioned by journalists, the vineyard owner deflected responsibility onto the subcontractor. As for the direct employers of the grape-pickers, the Kazakh couple, they refused to talk.
However, according to Jose Blanco, general secretary of the CGT-Champagne trade union, they were still operating for last year’s harvest.
“They’re presumed innocent so they’re still working,” he told The Telegraph. He called for a heavy sentence in the upcoming trial against the middlemen but said the champagne producer that employed them – Olivier Orbon – should also be sentenced. “They can’t just wash their hands of it and say they didn’t know.”
Authorities are also investigating the deaths of four grape harvesters in the Champagne region, believed to have suffered sunstroke in unseasonably sweltering conditions experts linked to climate change.
Prosecutors in November 2023 opened two probes into suspected human trafficking after around 200 Ukrainian and other foreign workers were found living in poor conditions during routine checks.
One investigation is underway. The other will reach court in March 2025 when a contractor faces charges of mistreatment of 57 African pickers.
This harvest, Mr Blanco said his colleagues had found more illegal camps in the woods “with people housed in tents that weren’t even hidden in plain sight, which is forbidden”.
“We saw African workers sleeping rough at Epernay station and being recruited in the morning by winegrowers. We saw service providers coming to recruit them and offering them much less than what they were supposed to be paid,” he said.
Four camps have been evacuated and closed down this harvest, he said.
Speaking to France 2, his colleague, Patrick Leroy, ex-head of the CGT-Champagne trade union, who used to work for Veuve Clicquot, said a similar court case for mistreatment of workers in 2018 saw the champagne house get off.
“Naturally, I asked the chairman how it was that, as the main order giver, he didn’t have a duty to be vigilant about the issue of human trafficking. He replied: ‘We’re not responsible at Veuve Cliquot. This is a detail.’”
He added: “I think if those at the top were condemned along with service providers, there would be a lot less abuse in the profession.”
Veuve Clicquot told the French TV documentary that they had “reinforced controls” of service providers.
‘Rogue actors’
The industry group Union of Champagne Houses has sought to distance itself from last year’s violations, with its co-head David Chatillon blaming contractors hiring seasonal workers.
“Rogue actors have threatened the image of champagne,” he said.
Last October, the industry group launched an action plan vowing to improve existing practices after what French media dubbed “the grape harvest of shame”.
Mr Blanco said that efforts had been made to ensure workers were properly fed, watered and given rest and shade after last year’s deaths. Housing conditions had improved in some quarters, he said, citing Joseph Perrier, Mumm and Moët & Chandon, which houses 1,900 of its 3,500 seasonal workers.
In the town of Pierry, around 100 employees of Moët, which belongs to luxury giant LVMH, are housed in a modern residence in the middle of the vineyards: a small two-storey building complete with dormitories, bathrooms, a laundry room and a canteen.
Workers are offered physical therapy sessions and stretching classes.
“We need to make people want to come and keep coming to harvest,” said Frederic Gallois, vineyard and supply director at Moët & Chandon.
‘Bury their heads in sand’
In the 2018 court case, a Sri Lankan couple running the service provider Rajviti were sentenced to three years’ imprisonment, one suspended, for “human trafficking” of 125 grape-pickers, mostly illegal immigrants. Veuve Clicquot’s head of wine-growing and harvesting services was acquitted, and the company said it had no knowledge of these practices.
However, Mr Blanco said others continue to “bury their heads in the sand”, without naming names.
“They know who provides the grapes, the owners, they have the means to go back up the chain if they want to.”
This harvest, his colleagues handed out flyers to grape-pickers, many eastern Europeans, informing them of their rights, including the minimum hourly wage, the limit on working hours and mandatory breaks.
Meanwhile, 22 labour inspectors and 84 police were deployed to oversee the harvest on a daily basis, according to the Marne prefecture in northeastern France.
Mr Blanco said: “The grapes of human misery can still end up in the finest bottles of champagne.”
