Wine Travel with Covid, Or Not!

So we are all bummed out right now as we felt compelled to cancel our upcoming trip to France to attend the Tastevin St. Vincents festival in Puligny Montrachet.  Despite having boosters after speaking and emailing plenty of friends and associates in France this is what we learned.  In order to enter France, you have to have some kind of negative Covid test no later than 24 hours before entry at the airport.  The problem is that gives you no wiggle room for delays or other issues that might delay your flight, not to mention dependent on your time schedule and flight schedule it might be near too impossible to meet that requirement.  After Customs and Immigration let you enter you then have to obtain a French Health Pass which requires another negative Covid test within 24 hours, your passport, and original vaccination cards.  The problem there is you can only obtain it at certain pharmacies and we were told as of today, just like the USA, it is impossible to get tests done and there are lines down the block at most pharmacies to get the tests done.  So it could be days or weeks before we could obtain the said pass.  We were told today that weeks ago museums, restaurants, etc. would accept your vaccination card but no more.  The French Government is now enforcing the law to the letter and levying heavy fines for anyone who they catch breaking the rules.  In addition, anything public including metro's, train's, supermarkets, you have to have the pass.  Murphy's law always applies to us so no question we got over there and would end up spending the next two weeks in a hotel despite being fully vaccinated and with that in mind we felt compelled to cancel.  So far everyone has refunded any advanced funds except the airlines which only offer a credit good for one year.  Bummer.  And to add insult to injury, Ireland announced today that they were lifting testing restrictions, and with only your vaccination cards you can come on over and go where you wish!  A complete 180-degree change from the Continent.  The problem with that is there are no Irish wines we want to buy right now.  So Covid continues to be a problem.  I wonder how much business France will lose because of this at the same time I understand the need to protect the public.  It is too simple and would take years to put in place but why not have a testing area on arrival at the airport that could do your test check your passport and vaccination cards and issue the health pass before you left the airport?  Too easy probably.  And if you think all of this is a problem be aware that before the end of the year the EU is instituting a new requirement to have a visa prior to entering that you will have to obtain online that from what I can tell is a security pass and similar to the USA Global Entry card that of course will require payment of a fee and good news is at least good for 3 years.  It won't change the length of time you can stay, which is 3 months, but you won't be able to enter without it.