French Wines Contain Pesticides

Consumer organization UFC-Que Choisir did lab tests on 92 French Wines. They found that all the wines, even the organic wines had traces of pesticides in them. Que Choisir tested wines ranging from a 1.63-euro ($2.20) bottle of generic red to a 15-euro Chateauneuf-du-Pape.

There are no limits on how much pesticides can be in a bottle of wine in the EU. Wine producers in France account for 3.7 percent of farmland and 20 percent of the country’s pesticide use, Que Choisir said.

“By drinking a glass of wine, you have every chance of unknowingly swallowing a few micrograms of these pesticide residues,” Que Choisir wrote. “No wine today escapes the pollution by plant-protection products applied to the vines.”

The findings included an insecticide and a fungicide not allowed in the EU, the group said. Wines produced from grapes from “conventional” agriculture on average contained four pesticides, mainly fungicides, while for wine from organic grapes residues mostly consisted of one to two pesticides, wrote Que Choisir.

Health-risk assessments for pesticides are generally based on toxicology studies for a single product, without taking into account cumulative effects, Que Choisir said.

The biggest pesticide count was found in a bottle of Bordeaux from 2010 priced at 10.44 euros, with 14 chemicals detected, followed by a 3.75-euro 2012 Bordeaux with traces of 13 products, according to the report.

“Weather conditions, particularly rainfall, have a direct impact on diseases of vines and attacks by parasites,” Que Choisir wrote. “The warm and dry weather of Provence and the Rhone valley partly explains why the wines from these regions have significantly less pesticides than their cousins from Champagne and particularly Bordeaux.” The group also found wines with residues close to zero in Bordeaux, as well as in the Rhone Valley, Loire Valley, Provence and Languedoc-Roussillon regions.

For wine made using organic grapes, pesticide traces may have originated in the environment, for example from spraying by neighboring wine makers, according to Que Choisir. Of 10 wines from organic grapes tested, six had residues close to zero, the group said.