Tough

It's tough to do something you believe is important.

Whether that's the winemaker who wakes up at 5am to start harvest by hand, because he won't compact the soil with a tractor, and it's too hot to pick after midday.

Or whether it's me, working on this for nearly a year now without pay, because we believe there's a better way to get wine from grower to glass — and a fairer price for winemakers who are struggling.

And then you see customers turn away because it's "too expensive."

Quantity over quality. Short term over long term.

Don't we ever think about the hidden cost of the cheap stuff — more pollution, more of the bill for climate change we're already paying?

What about drinking something that actually tastes good, and keeping alive the small, disappearing family farms that are genuinely looking after the land?

This is a bit of a rant today. But it's a needed one — keep reading and you'll see why.

If you can't stretch to more expensive wine right now, please don't.

But if you could manage just one case a year, it goes further than you'd think.

Don't only think about your wallet — think about the planet too.

1. Pour — France's smallest harvest since 1957

This year's French harvest is forecast below 34 million hectolitres — down 6% on 2025, the lowest since 1957. Drought, heatwaves and hail did it, says France's own Ministry of Agriculture. Full story →

It didn't land evenly, and that's the point: Champagne is down 48%, Burgundy and Beaujolais (where our own Anne of Domaine Lachat farms) are down a third, while Bordeaux is actually up 10%. A supermarket blend can smooth that away. A small winemaker can't. Why buying direct matters more this year →

2. Grow — Who actually pays for cheap wine?

From a clip Linda Johnson-Bell posted from her Beyond Organic Wine podcast with Adam Huss:

"We have one grower who pays the true cost of protecting the soil and the water, and then you have another one who achieves more volume using practices whose environmental costs are paid later, or by somebody else. But both wines have to enter the same price negotiation — it's not a free market, it's a market in which some costs have been hidden and are being carried by the wrong people."

That's exactly the hidden cost mentioned above — it's not abstract, it's the actual economics of why "cheap" wine is cheap. Listen: Real Wine vs. Most Wine (podcast) →

3. Thrive — how people are actually drinking and buying now

New IWSR purchase data pushes back on the viral "Gen Z is quitting alcohol" narrative — it's less about drinking less, more about drinking better. The Gen Z moderation myth, debunked →

A Napa winery just ditched its traditional wine club for a subscription model. We never needed to reinvent ours — skipping the middleman was the model from day one. Wine clubs are having an identity crisis →

This newsletter is written by Greg, founder of Vivan Cooperative — buying direct from independent winemakers across Europe, no importers, no distributors, no middlemen.