Monthly Archives: February 2026

I was aware that Donald Trump’s weaponized tariffs, applied to over 100 countries on an arbitrary and impossible-to-understand basis, had been challenged in the Supreme Court.
Seeing as he has packed courts on all levels with his cronies, I had little hope that the tariffs would be judged unconstitutional (executive overreach).
But, lo and behold, the Court just ruled 6 to 3 that this was indeed the case.
Hallelujah!

What I didn’t know was that the case against Trump had been brought by a wine importer!
https://edition.cnn.com/2026/02/21/busi … isk-takers

What’s significant here is that no major US corporation, many of whom have lost a lot of money due to the increased tariffs, stepped up to challenge the authoritarian president.
Reflecting the political environment in America and the fear that reigns there at the present time, none of the big guys had the cojones to say “stop this madness”. How pathetic

The wine company, Vos Selections, is in New York
https://vosselections.com/contact-us/

Their website had a section entitled “Fighting the Tariffs”
https://vosselections.com/tariffs-blog/

The US is learning that protection is ultimately counter-productive (this is one of the oldest and most widely agreed-upon ideas in economics, going back to Adam Smith and David Ricardo) as the cost of living rises and the average American is hurting – not to mention the ill-will and anti-Americanism Trump has created around the world.

I mention pyrrhic victory because within 24 hours, smarting from his defeat, Trump blithely announced that he would retaliate by applying an across-the-board 10% tariff on imports from every country on the planet. Will this unbelievably petulant response give rise to yet another court case?
Who knows? With Trump pushing presidential power to new extremes of questionable legality, most anything is possible…
Let us look at what happened in Bordeaux. Trump pulled the figure of a 15% tariff on French wine imports out of a hat. And, compounded by an increasingly low US dollar to euro exchange rate, sales on Bordeaux’s most important export market have unsurprisingly slumped. Of course, that penalizes the local wine industry, but also consumers of Bordeaux in the US.

The whole theory behind protectionism is that by raising the price of imported goods, homegrown industries will get a boost. But does anyone really think that Bordeaux wine lovers will automatically turn to California wines? In my opinion, most such people already have a lot of Bordeaux in their cellars and will simply wait until the prohibitive import duties are a thing of the past.

Meanwhile, the US president plays havoc with the rules of international commerce and law.

There’s a new kid In town, i.e. a new appellation: “Bordeaux Claret”.

For anyone who wishes to go into the technical details, here are the official criteria, in French, under “cahier des charges”: https://www.inao.gouv.fr/produit/bordeaux-claret-24339

As we all know, there is a more than a little schadenfreude going around about the plight of Bordeaux. Sales have plummeted more than in any other French red wine region and, in response, roughly 14,000 hectares of vines have been uprooted since 2020. To put things into perspective, that’s more than 50% of the combined vineyard area of the Côte de Nuits and the Côte de Beaune!!!
The people who are suffering are not the fat cats in three-piece suits, but the little guys, some of whose families have been making wine for generations. These are really tough times. The reasons for the drop in demand are multiple. Obviously, the Bordelais are not blameless, but red wine consumption has also been decreasing worldwide.

Something clearly had to be done and the radical reduction in vineyard area (government subsidized on the proviso that winegrowers commit to not replanting vines for 20 years) was the first step.

To help sales, the powers-that-be decided to introduce a new appellation starting with the 2025 vintage. The very first bottles have just been released. Of course, there is the point of view that this new appellation will only create unnecessary confusion and muddy the waters. I can see this to the extent that “Claret” is a very British name that is either unknown or considered prissy on Bordeaux’s largest export market in both value and volume: the US.
It is likewise an unknown term on the hugely important French market
What’s worse is that the guys in the Côtes du Rhône want their Claret appellation as well!
L’AOC Claret voulue par les côtes-du-Rhône pour leur vin rouge léger et édulcoré
And then there’s the risk of misidentifying “Claret” as “Clairet”, a different sort of wine altogether with a similar-sounding name…

On the plus side, give credit to Bordeaux for trying to dig itself out of a hole. Of course, not all initiatives succeed, but people are at least attempting something new. The idea is that wines entitled to Claret the appellation will necessarily have a lighter color and less tannin than those required for Bordeaux Rouge and, here’s the biggie, can contain up to 7 grams residual sugar per liter. To give you an idea of what this means, experienced tasters can perceive 1–2 grams/liter of sugar and for average consumers it’s more like 2–4 g/L.Furthermore, it is suggested that the wine be served chilled. Clearly, young people in particular are being targeted. This is all a pretty radical departure from traditional Bordeaux.

I called the Syndicat des Bordeaux and Bordeaux Supérieur this morning, but the person I spoke to was only qualified to talk about the technical aspects of Bordeaux Claret rather than the story behind it and how it will be promoted. Marketing is evidently very important in order to prevent this new product from being a big flop. Unfortunately, however, the promotional budget is funded by sales of basic Bordeaux, which have greatly diminished…

Bordeaux Claret was launched at the Wine Paris trade fair in February 2026. I wasn’t there to taste it, but an English friend, a Master of Wine, was. He said that the wine was fruity, upfront, and did indeed seem to suit young consumers. This same friend explained that even on such a traditional market as Britain, generation Z is unfamiliar with the term Claret, so that rebranding it should not be a problem. Mention was made above of the need to lower prices. Well, current price levels (about 8-10 euros a bottle) are unquestionably competitive compared to other regions, so the challenge is more to provide people with a satisfactory product and convince them to try it. With regard to quality, the wine must be approved by a blind tasting panel to be entitled to the appellation.