(Paris) Permanently uproot vines? With consumption at half-mast and many winegrowers unable to find buyers at retirement age, certain wine-growing regions are increasingly talking about this solution, a “heartbreak” which remains far from unanimous.
Bordeaux opened the door by initiating a subsidized sanitary grubbing-up plan in 2022.
Between the growing disenchantment with red wine, export difficulties to China and the United States, COVID-19 and inflation, economic difficulties have piled up. Winegrowers, lacking the means to maintain plots, simply abandoned them.
However, these fallow vines “can become sources of contamination”, explains Bernard Farges, president of the Interprofessional Bordeaux Wine Council (CIVB).
This organization co-finances with the state and the region the 57 million euro plan, which offers 6,000 euros ($8,600) per hectare uprooted.
Ideally, we should increase the consumption of red, but “in the short term, there are not 50 solutions, we must recalibrate our production potential,” says Bernard Farges.
Regularly resorting to subsidies to destroy surpluses (crisis distillation) “is wasteful,” believes the manager.
Burgundy, Champagne, Alsace, Loire Valley or Beaujolais: certain wine-growing areas are doing well. But other regions in difficulty are gradually resigning themselves to the definitive uprooting.
The Côtes du Rhône winegrowers’ union therefore requested aid in this direction in 2022, but did not wish to use inter-professional funds to co-finance them, explains its president Denis Guthmuller.
For him, this system must be considered “from a social angle, for wine growers of retirement age who cannot find a buyer for their land”.
The subject “remains very delicate to approach,” observes Christophe Bousquet, president of the Interprofessional Wine Council of Languedoc (CIVL).
His region has already experienced uprooting campaigns in the 1980s and 2000s.
“Every time, it’s heartbreaking, a failure,” he says. And “if we open Pandora’s box, are we going to see a rush because the price offered would be attractive? Won’t some people take the opportunity to crash more when they see the colleague leave? »
He does not completely rule out permanent uprooting, but “under certain conditions and in certain targeted places”, and he advocates above all support for retirement.
At the National Confederation of Wine and Spirits Producers with Appellations d’origine contrôlée (Cnaoc), “we have been talking about grubbing up for several years,” says its president Jérôme Bauer. “At the beginning we were quite isolated, but some have come a long way towards this reality. »
The observation is simple, he says: wine consumption is falling.
According to the public establishment FranceAgriMer, consumption per capita over the age of 14 in the country has fallen by 67% since 1960, to 45 liters per year.
Reverse this decline? “Illusory,” replies Jérôme Bauer. Boost sales abroad? “Spain, Italy, but also Australia or Argentina, are more competitive.” Lower yields? “A one-time solution.”
“We have a more structural crisis, with a wave of winegrowers who must retire within 5 to 10 years without necessarily finding buyers,” says the manager, pleading for a “permanent” solution.
There is aid for marketing, investment or irrigation, but no aid yet dedicated to definitive uprooting.
Some remain fiercely opposed to the idea, such as the agricultural union Modef.
The problem mainly comes from the fact that, since 2016, the vineyard area can be increased by 1% each year, its secretary general, Didier Gadea, denounced at the end of September. Instead, he calls for floor prices guaranteed by the State.
Jérôme Despey, head of the FranceAgriMer specialist wine council, does not want to “resign himself to the inevitability of a drop in consumption”.
We can “stop it” by talking differently about wine, by adapting to consumers and by pushing restaurants to lower the prices of the wines offered, he says.
We can also “set out again to conquer exports” by uniting under the “France” brand rather than by major appellations, he argues.
