Anything more would be stored until the CIVB decided that conditions had improved.
And what do they do with it next year when thay have even MORE that isn't sold???
Winecountry Finger Lakes Wine Country
Seneca Lake wines are the best of the bunch.
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)".
Who are these Frenches?
Even the Chinese know that drinking smokey pencil lead is a bad experience. Yikes, at the last wine tasting, had the horrible experience of sipping a Band-Aid. It doesn't get much worse than that.
As for 2003---if I was a Sauterne fancier---they are rated 95-100. Go figure.
They're getting hammered by the millions of Americans who refuse to buy anything French. Wine is a primary target of the boycott - their problem is they can't sell it.
See post #23. You can't sell wine to any consumer if the product is horrible--even the Chinese.
Think I'll run over to the Paso Robles Outback and get a bottle or two...Adelaida for Zinfandel and Carmody-McKnight for Champagne (Yes, Froggies, Champagne...made in America.) Don't give a rip if you do think it's your word and product.
A story I read and like to believe is that many wine fanciers tried Chilean, Aussie and CA wines on a lark rather than a serious boycott and realized that these other vintages were just as good if not better, as well as being vastly cheaper. Word-of-mouth got around, more people tried them and liked them and now the movement is picking up steam. The spell of snob appeal has been irrevocably broken and the myth of French superiority lies shattered along with the rest of "La Gloire."
(A word in a language French would know much better if not for the USA)
I used to follow the Bordeaux wines pretty closely, and would lay in a case or two when the getting was good. I opened one bottle of 1982 wine for my birthday a couple of years ago whose list price had gone up from $15 to $200. If you buy it early and keep it for 10 years or more, the prices are reasonable.
BUT, since Chirac stabbed us in the back, with the full approval of the French people, I haven't bought a single bottle of French wine, and I'm not going to for the foreseeable future. Too bad, because I like the stuff, but I just can't justify buying anything French after their treacherous behavior.
While I doubt that our boycott could ruin the French wine industry. Every American dollar not spent on French goods, can only isolate them economically. Also it will make them realize that there are bigger fish out there then themselves.
Les Français sont des singes de capitulation qui mangent du fromage.
Hey Frenchies, if you want some advise on how to handle this crisis, just ask our vice president! He'll tell you all what to do!
The French make wine?
Anything more would be stored until the CIVB decided that conditions had improved.
And what do they do with it next year when thay have even MORE that isn't sold???
Winecountry Finger Lakes Wine Country
Seneca Lake wines are the best of the bunch.
To wit: YELOW TAIL. Their Chardonnay is light and delicate, slightly effervescent. Their merlot is a robust, red-meat, fruity, deep red treat. No more FRANCH wine for me, thank you...
The Chilean wines are exciting--most are not for the timid. Spain has a great variety too. Likewise--can't forget the Italian Tuscan region.
they are powerful if they are real, and we should throw them in the face of the Demonrats...
The article makes no mention of the American boycott -- so they can keep pretending that their politics are not part of the problem.
C'est vrai. Et le pamplemousse aussi.
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