Cat Brandwood of Toscanaccio in Winchester would be happier to stick with deliveries for a while longer to minimise the risk of spreading infection. But she suspects she’ll be opening her doors on June 15 and aiming for some sort of normality

When lockdown was announced on March 23 I had already decided that I was going to close my doors to customers and operate a delivery service only for the time being. My other staff had clearly been uncomfortable working during their last shifts and I was increasingly concerned about bringing home the virus.

Here we are 11 weeks later; I’ve spent the equivalent of a week’s working hours driving around in a souped-up Fiat 500 that is wholly unsuited to being a delivery vehicle, I’ve developed a habit of talking to myself in my empty shop and yet I’m still not keen on the idea of throwing open the doors again and regaining my sanity.

As someone who, it turns out, really thrives on human interaction, why am I not keen to bring back the soul of my shop – interaction with my customers?

The advice we’ve been given essentially amounts to the following: Do a risk assessment, practise social distancing, everyone wash their hands, clean more frequently. This is exactly what was being practised in the shop pre-lockdown and it wasn’t good enough then. I don’t feel reassured that I’ll be doing the right thing by throwing open the doors on June 15, but I suspect that for the business to thrive I must.

As a business with fewer than five employees I don’t have to have a written risk assessment, but it has been reported that there will be random spot checks by HSE so it seems that it would be prudent to have this written down. The public (customers/staff) have also been encouraged to report conditions that they think are unsafe.

How much responsibility do I have? Will I find myself under investigation if there is an outbreak that can be traced back to my store? That is certainly what would happen if the business was the source of a salmonella outbreak.

Salmonella isn’t very easy to catch from talking to your customers, though. The government has made it clear that there are options for enforcement including fines and jail sentences of up to two years for businesses not protecting staff and customers. Just how far should I be going in ensuring everyone is protected? One independent business on my street will be supplying disposable gloves and facemasks at the door and requiring that they be worn in store.

My risk assessment currently labels the risk of opening as very high. As the only full-time member of staff, there is a real risk to business continuity as my being ill would shut the place. Delivery to my customers has largely been successful, especially in those first few weeks of panic, and I’d be much happier if this were to continue. I also know that as other businesses open up around me – businesses that haven’t been as lucky as I am to maintain a revenue stream during this period – that I need to be open too.

Even when I open again, I fear that a little bit of soul has been lost that will take time to recover. Friday evenings were often spent with customers clutching a well-earned glass of wine whilst I talked them through some wines for their weekend. It was a bustling place that was full of life, jollity, and the odd secret spilled. But mostly it was full of people: something I probably won’t see again for a long time.

The government is being urged to scrap plans to impose costly VI-1 import forms on all EU wines arriving in the UK from next year.

The Wine & Spirit Trade Association says European producers will face €300 to €400 of extra costs for every wine they export to the UK.

It argues that the forms have little meaning or relevance and are essentially “a barrier to trade”.

The requirement to use VI-1 forms will hit independents disproportionately hard, especially as specialist merchants typically over-index in European wines.

Speaking at a webinar for independent merchants, organised in partnership with The Wine Merchant, WSTA policy director Simon Stannard described the VI-1 system as “quite burdensome”.

He explained: “An exporter is required to undertake a suite of tests that accompany that shipment. We think those tests will cost around €300 or €400 a go, and we think there would be upwards of about a quarter of a million movements of these documents for goods coming from the EU to the UK.

“So it’s a huge burden on the exporters, but of course that burden simply passes on to the importer and any costs pass on to the consumer.”

He added: “These are not particularly useful forms. I think any wine producer from outside the EU will argue that these are a technical barrier to trade.

“Knowing the three types of acidity in a wine, two types of alcoholic content, the sulphite level, and having a lab test to confirm those details is not particularly helpful. It doesn’t particularly help traceability, but it does cost, and it does add bureaucracy.

“We’re quite worried that with the introduction of these rules, many small producers in mainland Europe will simply no longer want to send their goods to the UK.

“For those independent merchants for whom part of their USP is to get interesting stock from small producers, there’s a genuine risk that the supply might run out because they simply won’t want to spend €400 and go through the necessary hoop-jumping.

“It’s a real issue and one that people should be genuinely concerned about.”

The Wine Merchant’s reader survey this year found that France, Italy and Spain are independents’ most important countries of origin.

The same survey found that just over 18% of wine in the independent trade is imported direct from producers, with 44% of respondents expecting that figure to increase in the coming year.

The WSTA is hoping to recruit more independent members as it ramps up efforts to fight the trade’s corner over issues such as import documentation, labelling and tariffs that will come into effect from January, at the end of the Brexit transition period.

Flexibility. Market-sensitivity. Reliability. Those are the three distinguishing qualities that the wine producers of Languedoc-Roussillon have sought to bring to international wine markets since the 1980s.

These are not – it almost goes without saying – qualities that have always been associated with the French wine business. And that’s why – along with its embrace of varietal wine and flying winemakers – the region earned the epithet of “France’s New World”, when Australia et al were riding high and dictating terms in the late 20th and early 21st century.

Wine has moved on since then, of course. And the somewhat caricatured boundaries between supposedly New World and Old World practices have blurred. But the Languedoc-Roussillon has retained its ability to move with the times in a way that remains elusive in more traditional French regions.

Read David Williams’ article in full here