Posted on 07/05/2007 4:31:59 PM PDT by blam
French wine growers in crisis
By Henry Samuel in Olonzac
Last Updated: 2:25am BST 05/07/2007
As Richard Bourchet gazed across a dusty mass of gnarled, upturned vines in Olonzac, in the Corbières, south-western France, the European wine reform announced yesterday was far from his mind.
Unable to pay his bills, 'vigneron' Richard Bourchet has been forced to destroy his vines in Olonzac, south-west France
Only a few hours before these vines were neatly aligned and bearing the local carignan grapes but, unable to pay his bills, Mr Bourchet has uprooted several hectares that he has carefully tended for 25 years. In return, he will receive a few thousand euros in European subsidies to "definitively grub up" the vines.
"I come from a family of wine growers. I had hoped to pass my vineyards on to my children but my pockets are empty: we can no longer carry on a thousand-year-old tradition of wine making. It's an emotional moment," he said, staring at the grape graveyard rotting in the midday sun.
Mr Bourchet is just one of many small-scale "vignerons" (wine growers) in the Languedoc and Roussillon region who are prepared to grub up to avoid bankruptcy after three years of losses.
He said times were so bad that several winegrowers had committed suicide since the beginning of the year.
Local wine producers are furious that their sale prices have been slashed by around 50 per cent while wine prices in shops and supermarkets have not dipped. A litre of vin de pays is sold for as little as 0.35 euros (24p) and costs 10 times that amount in supermarkets. "Someone is pocketing the difference and we want to know who," he said.
Anger boiled into violence earlier this week when members of a shadowy group of militant winegrowers, known as Crav - the Regional Committee of Viticultural Action - threw sticks of dynamite at regional offices of the co-operative-run cellars that stock and sell their wine. In May, balaclava-clad members of the group issued an ultimatum to President Nicolas Sarkozy, warning him that if he failed to help winegrowers, blood would be spilled.
However their main problem is not their cut but actually selling the wine, as supply far outstrips demand. National consumption is dropping and imports of New World wine into the EU have risen by 10 per cent each year since 1996, squeezing out low- to mid-range home-grown wines such as those found in Languedoc. The European Commission adopted a reform yesterday designed to counter the rise of New World wines, reduce Europe's wine lake and redirect funds towards promoting European wines abroad.
The EU has an annual budget of 1.3 billion euros (£880 million) to help the wine sector but currently spends around 500 million euros a year simply getting rid of wine for which there is no market.
"If we do not reform, excess wine production is forecast to reach 15 per cent of annual production by 2010," warned the European Union's agriculture commissioner, Mariann Fischer Boel.
The reform will be presented to the European Parliament and the Council of Ministers later this year and the Commission expects it to come into force by next August. Key measures include encouraging farmers to grub up 200,000 hectares of vineyards and leave the sector, ending subsidies for exports and the distillation of unsold wine. It would also abolish the use of sugar for enrichment - a process called chaptalisation. An annual 120 million euros will go into marketing and promoting EU wines abroad. It also wants to simplify labelling rules to allow better branding of EU wines.
However, in Olonzac, vignerons were deeply unhappy about the EU plan. Bertrand Rouanet, president of the union of winegrowers for the Hérault region, said: "We reject the reform outright as it is nothing less than the organised assassination of the Languedoc vineyards."
Grubbing up vines to stay afloat, he said, while tempting, would not solve France's wine crisis: "Half the vines the commission wants to uproot are in Languedoc, but paradoxically it doesn't want to regulate planting new vines. In Eastern Europe - Ukraine, Bulgaria, Hungary - they're planting like crazy," he said.
The commission wants to end from 2014 restrictions on plantings, to allow successful producers to expand as long as there is a market for their wine.
Joël Castany, president of Europe's wine grape growers' association, who has vineyards in the region, was opposed to such a measure. "Grapevines are not like wheat or peas that can be planted one year and ripped up the next," he said, adding that the reform was "technically, economically and socially faulty", and that he expected the French government to reject it.
Quality wine producers were unhappy about opening protected labelling rules to allow all wines to indicate vintage and grape variety on the bottles.
By contrast, the CEEV wine trade association welcomed the reform. "If we wish to remain world leader, we need a market-oriented [approach] allowing European wines to be more competitive both in the internal market and in the external markets," said Lamberto Vallarino Gancia, head of the CEEV.
My grandfather grew up in Rutherford (Napa Valley) and his family grew "prunes" and "raisins". When I asked him about calling the crops that (vs. Plums or grapes) he explained to me that crops are often referred to by what they are grown for and not what the fruit actually is.
I recognize that you are making a joke, but I wonder if the headline writer is doing the same thing as what my grandfather is referring to.
Inevitable.
Leni
Don't get your panties in a bunch. We absurd and idiotic conservatives will have to shift gears from repudiating all cheese-eating surrender monkey goods to again buying goods from "conservative Sarkozy's France." And, if I drank wine, I'd have gritted my teeth and bought from that boneheaded Woolsey during Chirac's reign rather than from France.
Most Muslims don't drink wine...
False choice. Two Buck Chuck doesn't come from Sonoma.
I really do salute their efforts at turning around that Socialist hell hole...but it won't get me to buy any French wine anytime soon.
The Australian Shiraz wines are just too good and when I want a Cabernet or Pinot....the Californian varieties are superb.
It’s not just Washington. There are many places that are producing very nice wines. There is no longer the perceived French monopoly on high quality wines.
If French wine growers are in crisis, how soon will they wave the white flag?
How soon will they outsource their work to America?
Capitalism brought us fine French wines. Socialism bears only vinegar.
California has produced great wine for decades.
Do the math Pierre. How much do socialist French workers demand to be paid vs. capitalist Eastern European workers?
If Europe can afford to produce a gallon of ethanol for around $2, I think that they would be able to sell it here for a bit more than that (I don’t believe that any subsidy money is available for offshore producers, although I haven’t verified that.)
Neat. Thanks for that info.
It may be that the very best wine regions or subregions retain their advantages, but once you get out of the prime Bordeaux areas (to cite one example), vast areas of Chile, Australia, Spain, South Africa, New Zealand, the NW Pacific of the US, Texas (yes!), and many others, are producing very good, if not great, wine. In some cases, the French have priced their domestic business out of the market; a lot of the "peasant wine " sold in France comes from places like Yugoslavia and Algeria.
BRAVO! It irked the hell out of me too but, JimRob does not allow title changes. Should read: French Grape Growers In Crisis
Politics aside, I can’t see how destroying the vineyard is going to help them get back on their feet financially. Also a lousy choice as a statement. Why not just take the year’s wine production and pour it out in the streets?
http://www.tns-sofres.com/etudes/pol/161106_usmonde_n.htm
The last paragraph says that, in Nov. 2006, the most recent polling I can find on the net, the “pro-American” French believed the US’s current efforts against terrorism were negative (45%) versus positive (37%). See the last paragraph of the opinion poll’s results. I am glad France is trying to right itself, but your statements do not square with the available data, both in today’s videotaped statement of a French government minister AND these opinion polls. However, if you wish to call those who disagree “moronic” and in “la la land,” go right ahead.
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