This is what I will do to your wine bottles frenchie....
Posted on 07/08/2004 7:42:19 PM PDT by ijcr
Faced with what some are calling its greatest crisis for 150 years, France's most prestigious winegrowing region has decided to cut back the amount of wine it sells.
The Bordeaux Wine Council (CIVB), which includes legendary names such as Chateau Latour, Chateau Margaux and Chateau Haut Brion and countless smaller producers, independent wine merchants, trade unions and cooperatives, said yesterday that its members had agreed to limit sales from this season's harvest to 50 hectolitres (5,000 litres) per hectare.
Anything more would be stored until the CIVB decided that conditions had improved.
It is an unprecedented decision which will reduce the volume of 2004 vintage Bordeaux sold by 15% to 35% compared with last year.
A spokeswoman said the decision made by an emergency council meeting on Thursday had been "very difficult, but had to be taken". She added: "We are simply producing far more than we can sell. Prices have collapsed dramatically; we have to reduce supply in the hope they'll pick up again."
Bordeaux, which produces some of the world's grandest wines, has seen the wholesale price of a standard AOC (appellation d'origine controlée) red collapse by almost half in the past three years, to far below the point where winemaking can be profitable.
A 900-litre barrel now sells at €710 (£473) to €760, or €0.62 a bottle wholesale, compared with €1,500 in the late 1990s, industry observers say, and in the past 12 months exports have fallen by 9%. Ten to 20% of the region's 9,000 producers are in varying degrees of financial difficulty.
"The collapse in price of some Bordeaux AOCs has reached an unacceptable level that threatens the viability of our vineyards, the unity of our industry, the stability of our institutions and our image in France and the world," said Jean-Louis Trocard, the CIVB's president.
"This situation cannot continue. Everyone has got to accept their responsibilities and act accordingly." The CIVB is also proposing that hundreds of hectares of vineyards currently disused or the subject of inheritance fights should be uprooted to help pull the region out of the crisis, which is grave enough to have been compared by some to the phylloxera plague that almost wiped out France's winemaking industry in the early 1860s.
Bordeaux's problems in part reflect those of the whole French winemaking business.
Domestic consumption is half what it was 25 years ago, and export sales are in steep decline, suffering from the competition of more consistent, easier to identify, cheaper and more drinkable "New World" wines from Australia, California, South Africa and Chile.
In the euphoria of the mid-1990s, when a basic red brought €1,500 a barrel, many producers invested heavily in new equipment and land. The Bordelais has grown from 75,000 hectares (183,000 acres) of vineyards in 1980 to more than 120,000 now. It can produce 7m hectolitres (154m gallons) of wine, but can currently sell less than 5m.
Although they have agreed to be bound by the sales ceiling, the best-known Bordeaux Chateaux have so far escaped the crisis: the premiers and deuxièmes grands crus classés, helped by their reputation and easily remembered names, more than doubled their prices on the 2003 vintage.
It is the producers of generic Bordeaux wines (the region has a highly confusing 57 appellations, including Bordeaux, Bordeaux Supérieur, Médoc, Saint-Julien, Graves and Pomerol) who are suffering the most, although even some better-known AOCs like, for example, Saint-Emilion, have also found themselves in difficulty.
"The small producers are getting smaller, and the big are getting bigger," said a disillusioned producer from Entre-deux-Mers, who asked not to be named. "Me, I'm not making a centime, and if things carry on like this for much longer I'll just stop. I can't even repay my loans."
Red or dead - facts on the grapevine
·Bordeaux calls itself the world's largest fine wine-making region with some 122,000 hectares of AOC-producing vineyards and more than 9,000 vineyards. Its reputation is based mainly on red wines, notably from the Médoc, Saint-Emilion and Pomerol districts.
· The region's geography and climate is said to be perfect for winegrowing and a wide diversity of microclimates and soil types (clay, gravel, chalk, limestone) favour a range of grape varieties including Cabernet Sauvignon, Cabernet Franc and Merlot.
· The first grapes were grown here by Celts in 100AD. Bordeaux really got into wine in 1152 when Eleanor of Aquitaine married Henry Plantagenet; in exchange for food, textiles and metals, we imported claret. Bordeaux wine's reputation was established in the capitals of Europe by the 1700s; by the 1850s its grandeur was assured.
· A newborn 2003 bottle of one of five premiers grands crus classés of Bordeaux (Chateaux Lafite-Rothschild, Latour, Margaux, Mouton-Rothschild and Haut-Brion) costs £150; a 1955 Chateau Haut-Brion sold for £1,760.
· A bottle of generic wine from one of the 57 Bordeaux appellations costs £6-£15 and, if you are not French, will probably taste inferior to something from Australia or Chile at half the price.
· For many, Bordeaux wines are over-rated and over-priced. According to Malcolm Gluck, writer of the Guardian's Super plonk column, Bordeaux is "a fatuous circus, run by spin doctors (aka Chateaux, merchants, negociants and those sycophantic wine writers whose main preoccupation is maintaining the myths)".
Get rid of Chirac. Sales might improve.
So9
A l'infer, France!
C'est dommage. Feeling their pain and happy to do so bump.
deux francs chuck
Anyone who knows wines recognized the 2003 Bordeaux futures descriptions of smoke, charcoal, graphite, barbecue spice and licorice means a bad batch, a bad year.
The French are just crying about poor sales because they prefer to whine.
Twaddle!
ML/NJ
The boycott is working.
LOL! Sort of like the more wearable fashions of NY.
The French make wine?
I've been told that Grey Goose vodka has been sold by its French owner to Bacardi. Is this so? Is there any French ownership of Bacardi?
I haven't had a drop of it since the French stabbed us in the UN, and I won't (though it's the best) until the ownership changes.
France is dead to me.
This is what I will do to your wine bottles frenchie....
LOL! My preferred brand!
This actually is a very strange approach. OPEC does it and gets away with it only because it is a cartel and members claim to be unwilling to compete with one another.
The Chileans, Australians and Californians must be delighted. The arrogant French delude themselves by thinking that French wine is worth a premium and that their plonk is so much better. Americans don't need yet another reason not to drink French wine. Oh, sure, the Kerry's will continue to buy $100 a bottle French wine but they are wealthy elitists.
Whoa! Were'd you find that photo of Helen Thomas applying her nightly depilatory?
stupid b*stards. Its a boycott! Get if froggy?
I accept my responsibilities. I have not bought a French wine in more than a year.
Bought some fabulous Chilean wines last month. Australia is rocking with Shiraz. South Africa, New Zealand and Spain have very enjoyable winners too.
You are right on...'94 now that was an excellent year! I had heard the Chinese were beginning to inflate Bordeaux futures at one time(94-01) but this hit piece seems like the French wine are withering on the vine!?
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