Fear of Trumps Tariffs Ripples Through Frances Champagne Region

French Champagne producers do nearly a billion dollars’ worth of business with the United States every year.But on Friday in Épernay, the world capital of sparkling wine, the only number on anybody’s lips was 200.That was the percent tariff that President Trump has threatened to impose on Champagne and other European wines and spirits exported to the United States, in a trade war that exploded this past week after the European Union countered Mr.

Trump’s penalties on steel and aluminum with its own duties on American products.The triple-digit menace landed like a thunderbolt in Épernay, rattling workers in nearby fields, producers in small villages and the venerable houses that line the Avenue de Champagne, Épernay’s central boulevard and a UNESCO Heritage site that oozes tasteful wealth.“A 200 percent tariff is designed to make sure that no Champagne will be shipped to the United States,” said Calvin Boucher, a manager at Michel Gonet, a 225-year-old Champagne house on the avenue.With 20 to 30 percent of the 200,000 bottles it makes yearly exported to American wine merchants and restaurants, “that business would be crushed,” he said, adding that the price of a $125 Champagne would more than triple overnight.Épernay sits in the heart of a region that produces the world’s finest bubbly.

The United States is its biggest foreign market, with 27 million bottles shipped there in 2023, valued at around 810 million euros ($885 million)....