Bitter Harvest

While I still can’t drive myself out from the unbelievable beauty, great food of Toscana and Piedmont after three weeks of holiday, I can’t help thinking about the labor shortage during the harvest.

We have stayed 5 meters far from Sangiovese vine of Chianti Classico, close to Siena, for 5 days. One of Gallo Nero Family Losi Querciavalle running from 3 generations was just a stone’s throw. By sharing a vigneron and family winery’s daily live, the history, the fantastic wine, we heard also the worry of seasonal worker. The passion does not only mean knowledge, discipline, constant efforts, luck, but also a non-accountable price… In the last past years, they have difficulty to find seasonal workers, experienced or not. They are obliged to hunt via some immigrant agent…

This reminded me of France… I remember twenty years ago, our neighbors – the Vignerons in Champagne hired seasonal workers, more precisely professional seasonal labor for every year’s harvest. It was a happy camp, people working together, eating sweet champagne grape, throwing those precious main ingredients of champagne to others...

But the market has been shrinking…While hiring immigrants when domestic unemployment rate is two digital, sounds scandalous, agricultural sector faces serious issue to get the application from local markets.

When we asked our friends, a vigneron family about his labor storage this year, they announced happily that they had found 35 people… but some just didn’t show up… 27 Aug – the harvest opening day, they had to use every way they can think of, to find 3 vacancies… Social media, such as Facebook was part of solution. Real story, people hiring also seasonal labor in LinkedIn…

What a bitter harvest! Whole year’s hard work can go in vain, but if the harvest price is too high, does the well-controlled grape become the deer’s lunch and the birds’ snack? If the vigneron does pay, who can continue to afford a hand harvested bottle? Or, everyone will go to machine friendly location? And this phenomena is not only in France and Italy…remember steep Mosel?

Article by: Jin ROGER, DipWSET