Why the French are drinking less wine

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Hello from France,

I’m spending Easter with friends in western France. We’re trying our best to help the local wine producers prosper. But consumer habits are changing. In 1960 the French reportedly each imbibed, on average, 116 litres of wine in a year. By 2018 that figure had fallen dramatically, to 17 litres annually. No doubt it’s even lower today. Read our piece (with or without a glass in hand) to learn why. To pair with that, let me recommend our new article on the ways authorities in Paris are remaking their city. With the Olympics just months away, many will be paying more attention to the French capital.?

A court handed SBF a 25-year prison sentence, for fraud, on March 28th. Marjorie Taylor Greene (MTG), meanwhile, has been plotting against the House speaker. We’re unimpressed. Not by the developments, as such, but by the annoying habit of every Tom, Dick or Harry (TDH) being described with a set of three initials. We call time on the practice: read our full denunciation of triple-digit inflation.

We are more impressed by the prospect of a full solar eclipse that will be visible across much of North America on April 8th. For about four minutes in the late morning, depending on where you live, day will turn to night. As our senior science editor has written, eclipses no longer generate fear and instead provide an excuse for parties. But “however noisy the crowd is beforehand, the black hole in the sky punched by the Sun’s obliteration is guaranteed to reduce everyone to thoughtful silence.”

Our weekly history quiz, Dateline, is back, and includes some Easter-themed extracts. I’d rate this week’s challenge as only moderately fiendish (do let me know if you disagree).

For more serious fare, we have published our latest assessments of two big economies: the one in California and the one in China. The Chinese economy has been stuttering, and Xi Jinping is looking for “new productive forces” to power it to sustained growth and overtake America. Doing so with a shrinking workforce and slumping demand will be hard.?

Last week I asked how you expect Vladimir Putin to respond to the terrorist attack in Moscow in late March. Larry Shubnell, in America, sees it as damaging to the Russian leader: “He’s in a no-win situation. The attack shows that he’s not in control of everything.” Perhaps, Larry. But far more of you expect Mr Putin to seek ways to exploit the situation and a coming trial of the alleged perpetrators. Kerstin Meincke, in Germany, expects the Russian leader to place the blame on Ukraine to try to “justify more and stronger attacks” on the country.

This week, I’d like to get your views on China. Will Mr Xi grow more conciliatory abroad, and for example less eager to back Russia, if his country’s economy struggles more in the coming year? Or would an economic downturn go together with a more confrontational foreign policy? Write to us at [email protected].

Adam Roberts, Digital editor

Recommended reads

How Xi Jinping plans to overtake America

Chinese officials are hunting for ways to power the country’s economy. The country’s workforce is shrinking and demand for property has slumped. “What China really wants to be is the leader of the next industrial revolution,” says Tilly Zhang of Gavekal Dragonomics, a consultancy. That will require it to upgrade traditional industries, break foreign strangleholds on existing technologies and forge a new path in industries of tomorrow. Although the central government’s ambition is impressive, even unsettling, it cannot succeed without the help of local governments, which are short on cash, and private entrepreneurs, who are short on confidence.

California is gripped by economic problems, with no easy fix

Home to many of America’s most progressive policies, from criminal justice to vehicle emissions, California serves a unique role as a punchbag for right-wing politicians. Every few years it becomes fashionable to declare that it is a failed state, or that the California dream is turning into a nightmare. This rhetoric is often overblown: in terms of pure economic heft California remains the most powerful American state. But for all its continuing prowess in innovation (not least in artificial intelligence), California again appears to be entering one of its periodic rough patches. The state faces three overlapping challenges: rising unemployment, growing fiscal strains and population outflows. All of these should abate over time, but for now they mark out California as a pocket of relative weakness in an otherwise robust American economy.

The pros and cons of corporate uniforms

If you work in a white-collar job in an office and make your way there this week, it is unlikely that anyone will be able to guess exactly what you do from your clothes. That is not true for lots of the people you will interact with. The bus driver who gets you to your destination, the barista who makes your coffee and the people on reception who wish you “good morning” as you enter the building—they, and many others, are likely to be wearing some kind of corporate uniform. A poll of American workers conducted last summer by Gallup found that although most employees wear casual clothes—some smart, some really not—almost a quarter donned a uniform.

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