Testing times for French wine producers
Wine is less a beverage than an elixir of life in France, but the country’s vintners say they’re confounded by a problem that threatens their livelihood - too much of a good thing and not enough people drinking it.
Pinched by overproduction, shrinking exports, advertising restrictions, an aggressive campaign against alcohol abuse and changing drinking habits, at least 6,000 growers and winemakers staged spirited demonstrations nationwide yesterday to press the government for help.
“We are a sector in crisis,” said Jean-Michel Lemetayer, the head of France’s main farmer union, urging the state to bail out a bottlenecked industry awash in a sea of Chablis and Bordeaux.
Vintners wearing black armbands marched through the streets of Bordeaux, Avignon, Angers, Macon, Nantes, Tours and several other cities in key winemaking regions to urge the Agriculture Ministry to help offset their financial losses.
Protesters from vineyards that make the celebrated Cote du Rhone reds carried a mock coffin with the inscription: ”Here lies the last winemaker.”
France’s wine industry, which employs about 500,000 people, says exports through August 31 dropped by more than 5.5% in volume and 9.6% in value. Experts say Bordeaux was particularly hard-hit, with foreign sales of its signature reds down 25% in the first eight months of this year.
Vintners say overproduction worldwide, and especially in France – which harvested a bumper crop of grapes this year – has glutted a market where French wines already face fierce competition from vintages from California, Chile and Australia.
In the past, producers of cheap table wine suffered the most when there was a surplus. Now, makers of more prestigious “appellation” wines face bankruptcy if prices keep sinking deeper into the cellar, the Confederation of French Wine Co-operatives warned.
Agriculture Minister Dominique Bussereau, acknowledging the “deep worry” among vintners, promised to meet with industry leaders next week. “The government understands these difficulties,” he said.
Aggressive campaigns against alcohol abuse and drunken driving also appear to have curbed consumption.
President Jacques Chirac, determined to reduce the 45,000 deaths a year blamed on alcohol, launched a crackdown after his re-election in 2002 that officials say has led to a dramatic drop in road deaths – but also has been blamed for a drop in wine sales.
The average Frenchman now drinks half as much wine as in 1961. Nonetheless, France continues to rank No. 1 in the world in per capita wine consumption, with the average person putting away 13.2 gallons a year.
