For female winegrowers, maternity leave is a real conundrum

fter causing a stir on social media, the message posted by Champagne winegrower Mathilde Savoye is anything but the distressed call of a pregnant woman who has run out of solutions for looking after her vines just a few days before she gives birth. It illustrates the “deeper issue of the lack of skilled labour and the burden of red tape [in the wine industry]”, says Savoye. As she stopped pruning a block of her 3.4 hectares of vines in La Neuville-aux-Larris (Champagne) on Friday 28 January to speak in a video posted on Instagram, Savoye said that, on the eve of giving birth and stopping outdoor work, she had no solution for continuing to prepare her vines for the next season. After initially turning to the Marne recruitment agency for a replacement, the farm worker she was sent has not been back to work for two weeks. The abandonment of his post only led to more tedious forms for terminating the contract and being able to consider recruiting a new replacement.

“We are obliged to go through a legal process, which is to be expected with labour laws but requires several weeks of administrative delays (letters sent by registered post, etc.). When you work with nature, this just isn’t feasible”, laments Savoye. Since she settled on the family estate in 2017, she had planned to be independent and to manage her vineyard alone. But she had no-where to turn until the replacement service found her a solution – a qualified worker took over on Wednesday 2 February for the entire month. “I'm lucky, my situation has been resolved”, said Savoye, but she pointed to the much broader issue of recruiting qualified workers in the wine industry.