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.
Yes, I have had many good reds from California. I also like Australian, New Zealand, Portuguese, Spanish and South American wines. I also like NY whites.
Also, a lot of these farmers are probably salt of the earth people who have no quarrel with us. It has been the big-city elites of France and their mediots who have been anti-American. Not necessarily so out in the countryside. I know that several Freepers over the years have commented that they were well-treated in France outside the big socialist cities. I don’t doubt that.
If I didn’t have moronic glee, I wouldn’t have no glee at all.
I’m partial to Italian and American, though I’ve had some tasty spanish wines as well. I buy 75% Washington state though.
It's the American oil companies :-)
With all this wine talk I have an urge to open a bottle.... Now I have to choose..... That is the hard part....
Me thinks you're getting a little carried away here ... fiercely pro-American? The French have never been fiercely pro-American, even on D-Day plus one on June 7, 1944. It really has more to do with what degree they tolerate Americans ... since Chirac is gone they've warmed up somewhat ... but only slightly.
Considering that this is Europe, you know that the taxman is getting a very healthy cut.
I would like to know why it takes so much money to get rid of so much wine? I know a lot of people who would dispose of it for them for free.:)
Count me in! The subsidies explain why it seems like French wine costs less in my neighborhood grocery store than in Paris or the countryside. Personally, I'm all for French taxpayers subsidizing my vices. If only the Belgians would subsidize Trappist beer!
I get no satisfaction, no Schadenfreude, no Joie de Dommages from this. French wine growing is a part of western culture and tradition. It’s just more erosion of a great heritage.
Hell, I’ll bet you can get a member of the U.S. Congress to agree with those claims. One nutbag does not an anti-American administration make.
Nobody said that the French Government was “anti-American”—what I responded to with a poll of French public opinion and the video of a French Minister’s statement that Bush may have been behind 9/11 where the poster said the French had a “fiercely pro-America” government. Perhaps you haven’t read the posts completely, but do you believe the French government and electorate are “fiercely pro-America”? I wish they were. The facts show otherwise, and telling ourselves that they are “fiercely pro-America” is not factual. Just responding with facts.
Yup. You got it right here...
I never allow moronic prejudices of nativists and other ignorami to affect my choices when it comes to practicing sin, such as alcohol consumption. Geez, what could be worse than being a chauvinistic sinner?!
And, by the way, French wines are good and available at reasonable prices nowadays. Why suffer your already miserable existence without them?
Really good French wine is rarely matched elsewhere, and never exceeded. A really bone dry, crisp, genuine chablis, a fine mellow balanced red bordeaux, a rich but delicately balanced white burgundy these are as good as it gets.
To little, to late I say.
TX is making wines that are cheaper and better then anything from Frogistan.
“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%).”
In other words about the same as Americans. I thought the French were much more against the war in Iraq than they actually are apparently.
No, the question was not about Iraq. The question was about whether the US’s actions generally, that includes such factors as an alliance with Israel, the war in Afghanistan, etc., had an impact regarding terrorism.
More French think think that the US’s actions generally with respect to terrorism are negative than those who think it is positive.
Let’s not mix Bordeaux grapes and Chardonay grapes. Apples to apples my friend/.
“More French think think that the US’s actions generally with respect to terrorism are negative than those who think it is positive.”
Still more positive than I would have expected, all things considered. I still can’t figure out what you are whining about. I think it’s good news that only 45% of France thinks the US’s efforts against terrorism are negative. I would have guessed it was more like 95%.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.