France’s champagne workers are being forced to pick grapes under scorching heat and living in makeshift quarters described as living “hell”.

A string of investigations have alleged that some of the grapes that end up in even some of the top champagne bottles are picked by victims of “modern-day slavery”.

Producers are now gearing up for a human trafficking case involving pickers that promises to rock the land of bubbly when it opens next spring.

While the work is back-breaking, grape-picking long had a vaguely romantic ring to it with pickers traditionally housed in chateau dormitories and treated to decent food and wine into the bargain.

However, the reputation of the famed winemakers took a massive knock when reports emerged of migrant workers living in appalling conditions and other labour violations.

A new investigation has also uncovered squalid housing where workers, undocumented migrants from Senegal, Mali, Mauritania, Guinea and Gambia, were kept in sordid conditions before working in the vineyards.