Bordeaux top for pesticide use in Que Choisir survey

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In case you missed it there was an interesting - and rather alarming - report last week from the French consumer group Que Choisir. It tested 92 bottles of wine and found traces of pesticides in every one, including the organic wines though levels were lower in the latter.

It didn't seem to make any difference how much the wines, which ranged from 1.63€ to €15 in price, cost. The highest pesticide count was found in a 2010 Bordeaux costing 10.44€, in which 14 different chemicals were detected, followed by a 3.75€ 2012 Bordeaux which contained traces of 13 products, according to the report.

It also claims that wine producers in France account for 3.7 percent of farmland but 20 percent of the country’s pesticide use (T reckons the figure is higher than that). France is the highest user of pesticides in the EU according to Que Choisir using 62,700 tonnes in 2011. Some of the chemicals identified were illegal, according to this extended report from Wine Spectator though none were present in dangerous concentrations.

For more detail on the report see Bloomberg's report here and, for French speakers, a report in Le Figaro here.