The Coronavirus situation has been developing rapidly in Hong Kong. Taking the safety of customers into consideration, some restaurants have decided to suspend their operations. As the number of people infected keeps rising in Hong Kong, there is a fear of community outbreak. People are being encouraged to stay indoors. To ensure customers’ confidence, many restaurants and bars have taken additional precautionary measures, such as instructing staff to wear face masks, regular body temperature-checks, and reinforcing stricter hygiene and cleaning procedures. Some hotel restaurants have...

A law restricting Champagne retail promotions in France is due to be “softened” just 12 months after its introduction, db can exclusively reveal. As reported earlier this week, shipments of Champagne worldwide have dropped to their lowest level since the global financial crisis, following an estimated decrease of 4.5 million bottles in 2019, which has taken the total figure down to 297.4m bottles. Singled out by the Champenois as the primary cause of this decline has been the introduction in France in January last year of a set of rules to restrict the nature of promotions on certain...

The INAO has reportedly backed down from its decision to exclude 64 Burgundian communes from being able to use the AOC ‘Bourgogne’. As reported earlier this week, the Institut National de l’Origine et de la Qualité (INAO) met in Montreuil near Paris and on its agenda was making a more concrete delineation of Burgundy. To the surprise of many growers, this decision would have stripped 64 communes, all in the north of the region and including Chablis, of the right to use ‘Bourgogne’ as an AOC if they wished to. On the other hand, all of the communes in Beaujolais...