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The things Americans buy from the European Union have been charged an extra 10% tariff since April. If current trade talks fail, the Trump administration says they'll get even more expensive in August. That has winemakers in France's Burgundy region rethinking their trade with the U.S. NPR's Eleanor Beardsley reports.
ELEANOR BEARDSLEY, BYLINE: Thomas Jefferson loved Burgundy wines. In a 1789 letter to a friend in France, he wrote, I now find myself with a pressing need. I ask you, therefore, to send me immediately 250 bottles of Meursault wine.
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BEARDSLEY: Hanna Shaps' family makes wine in the small Burgundy village of Meursault. She's half American.
HANNA SHAPS: It was actually my father, Michael, who arrived in 1990, coming from New York. He knocked on the door of the wine school and said, OK...
BEARDSLEY: He studied in exchange for English conversation lessons for winemakers. The U.S. is the top export market for Burgundy wines.
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BEARDSLEY: Shaps drives me up to one of their vineyards along the hillside.
SHAPS: And we're going to go to a plot called Les Vignots, which comes from old Burgundian for Vignots - high vines - because they're quite steep and a hundred percent southern exposed.
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BEARDSLEY: Burgundy is known for its niche wines with small yields. The grapes are picked by hand. Irrigation is prohibited.
SHAPS: It's really what the land gives you, you take. And what it doesn't give you, you don't have.
BEARDSLEY: Burgundy or Bourgogne vineyards were divided into small parcels by monks during the Middle Ages. Each produces a different wine, depending on its terroir.
SHAPS: Terroir is a place where all of the conditions are the same, that nowhere else the same thing exists. So even if you go 10 meters away, there might be a change in subsoil. There might be a change in exposition. The wind might come at a different time of day or the sun, and so it makes a difference.
BEARDSLEY: Eighty percent of Shaps' winery exports go to the U.S. They also make wine in Virginia. But because of the tariffs, they're diversifying. They're not the only ones.
VINCENT BOYER: So I am Vincent Boyer - Vincent Boyer with American accents.
BEARDSLEY: This fourth-generation Meursault winemaker says in his parents' day, a hundred percent of their exports went to the U.S. But the 2008 subprime crisis prompted them to develop markets in northern Europe and Asia. He says the U.S. is no longer considered a stable market. He's just returned from there.
BOYER: Everybody's worried about the future. And I see how is the importers, the restaurants - all the restaurants is not working the way it's supposed to be.
BEARDSLEY: It's a searing-hot day, so 14th-generation Burgundy winemaker Pierre-Vincent Girardin invites me into his cool cellar.
Ah.
PIERRE-VINCENT GIRARDIN: Let me show you the cellar.
BEARDSLEY: It's filled with hundreds of oak barrels. He says the U.S. is his biggest market, with about a quarter of sales.
GIRARDIN: American citizen, like, loves French wine and drink a lot of it. So they know a lot of what Burgundy's all about.
BEARDSLEY: Girardin says his business is booming, and people want his wine. He doesn't understand why President Trump is putting up barriers to free trade.
GIRARDIN: The global economy needs everyone. I just wish he considered all the U.S. citizen that works for the French wine market. I think we create also a lot of jobs by selling the wines there.
BEARDSLEY: I ask if he has a message for President Trump.
GIRARDIN: I hope he drinks some Burgundy wine, so he knows what he's doing. That's my point of view.
BEARDSLEY: Girardin says if tariffs go up more, his importers will no longer be able to buy his wine. Tariffs are not making the U.S. economy stronger, he says; they're just depriving Americans of products they want.
Eleanor Beardsley, NPR News, Meursault, Bourgogne.
(SOUNDBITE OF LOUIS ARMSTRONG SONG, "LA VIE EN ROSE") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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