GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – Currency swings prompt a type of reporting all their own, and it isn’t the best journalism, stories pushed into an editor’s assumptions. It’s an approach akin to trying to fit a size 14 body into a size 10 dress. So if you read an article like this one in The Drinks Business, please keep an open, questioning mind.
A number of publications wrote last Friday that supermarkets over the border from Switzerland would be packed with Swiss shoppers on Saturday, taking advantage of sudden great bargains two days after the Swiss franc euro peg was dropped by the Swiss central bank. Basel put on extra trams and some Swiss shops temporarily stopped accepting euros from shoppers.
It didn’t happen, not in the big way that was predicted. As one of the store managers cited in the article above said, maybe there were more shoppers on Saturday, next door to Geneva – but it was a lousy day for skiing, which tends to send people shopping.
Anecdotal data, some from my GenevaLunch news site and FB page readers, but also from stores in France, as reported by Swiss and French media, is that maybe there was a slight increase, but nothing worth writing home about. I haven’t bothered to check but I haven’t seen or heard any evidence that wine shops in France suddenly saw their shelves emptied.
So strong Swiss franc + low euro = mad dash to French wine stores doesn’t quite add up.
The two currencies are more or less at parity. In Divonne, at the Nicolas chain wine shop you can buy a Meursault, Joseph Drouhin 2010 for €39.70. It’s CHF42 in at least one Swiss shop. Ditto, almost identical prices for Beaune Clos des Mouches 1er cru, 2011, Aleth Girardin, which I’d buy first, at Cave SA in Gland. Closer to home and just two francs more, so I’m not likely to run over the border for that, and I’m not alone.
French wine prices are not suddenly a terrific deal: they’ve simply started to fall to the level of Swiss wines prices, for wines above CHF/€10. To anyone who assumes it’s true that everything costs more in Switzerland, all the time, here is a lesson: Swiss wines are generally a better deal, compared to same quality wines, than French ones. The tax is lower in Switzerland, the market is sophisticated, wine buying clubs that benefit from bulk purchases are popular – and boutiques know Swiss wine lovers can easily stock up when they travel in France. Beaune is just a couple hours from Geneva.
Swiss consumers can undoubtedly find some good deals over the border right now, but they’ll need to know where to shop, what they are looking for and recognize a deal with they see it.
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