Glyphosate in your glass? The question has become concrete. VinePair devoted several episodes of its "Wine 101" podcast to this subject, drawing in particular on data provided by Gabriella Macari of Macari Vineyards, to document the presence of this molecule in vineyards and, by extension, in certain wines.
Glyphosate is the most widely used herbicide in the world since its introduction in the 1970s. In viticulture, it is used primarily to control weeds under the vine rows. The problem: residues can persist in soils, be absorbed through roots and end up, in varying concentrations, in grapes and then in finished wine.
In France, the regulatory debate is intense. Revue du vin de France documented investigations by Bordeaux associations denouncing pesticide residues in wines, a sign that the issue affects the greatest appellations. On the health authorities side, Vitisphere reports that the National Food Safety Agency (Anses) formulated proposals to restrict certain plant protection products, but these proposals are judged by part of the profession as likely to "lead viticulture into a dead end" — a phrase that sums up the tension between health imperatives and agronomic feasibility.
At the European level, the line is more accommodating. According to Vitisphere, a European agency recently kept glyphosate off the list of plant protection substances classified as carcinogenic, which contrasts with the assessment by the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), which had classified it as "probably carcinogenic" as early as 2015. This divergence in assessment between institutions partly explains the regulatory instability that has characterized this issue for ten years.
For the consumer, the reality is one of fragmented information. Maximum residue limits authorized in wine exist, but transparency on analyses performed bottle by bottle remains limited. The choice of wines from organic farming — where glyphosate use is prohibited — offers documented assurance, without entirely eliminating any trace of contamination through drift or persistence in soils.