The CGT champagne trade union said the punishment was not sufficient.

“What we are asking for is the downgrading of the harvest” in the zones where the offences were committed so it could no longer be used to produce champagne, said Jose Blanco, CGT general secretary.

Every year, around 120,000 seasonal workers are recruited to pick the grapes grown across 34,000 hectares (84,000 acres) in the Champagne region.

Its peculiar to me for the trade union to be demanding these areas be unclassed as fit to grow grapes for champagne, as that isn’t supposed to be a political thing. Or so I thought at least it was botanical.

It seems like the trade union would want these regions unclassed because the value of their grapes would inherently increase if some of the supply of grapes for real champagne was artificially reduced to even less than 34k hectares. It feels like theyre just leaning on this opportunity to make money more than giving a shit about the actual issue. Otherwise why wouldnt they just call for the businesses growing in the area to be forced to hand over their operations to someone else?