French winemakers ‘battle for survival’ as minister prepares for crisis talks

Original article by Kim Willsher

French winemakers are often accused of viewing the glass as half empty. Dire warnings about the state of the sector – one of the three pillars of the country’s economy – are a hardy perennial blamed on everything from geopolitics to a drop in the number of drinkers.

Before a crisis meeting with the agriculture minister on Monday, vineyard owners say an unprecedented series of setbacks, including some of the worst harvests in 70 years, has left many of them on their last legs.

Jean-Marie Fabre, the president of the independent winemakers’ syndicate, said urgent action was needed to save up to a fifth of the country’s winegrowers.

“They are putting their final efforts into this battle for survival. The situation is dramatic and the government has to do something,” Fabre said.

“We cannot imagine that this sector that is so important for France will be abandoned, but if the government doesn’t act then it is saying the wine and spirits industry is no longer important, which would be hard to believe.

“It would be like the German government saying it no longer cares about its car industry.”

Several thousand winegrowers turned up to a protest last weekend in the southern city of Béziers, calling on the government to come up with a rescue package to compensate for harvests hit by bad weather, rising costs and falling sales.

Earlier this month the ministry of agriculture predicted this year’s production would 3.6bn litres, the same as in 2024, which was also considered a disastrous year.

Fabre said winemakers had been hit by a series of setbacks outside their control over the last five years that had weakened their businesses to the point of collapse. They were the Donald Trump’s 15% tariffs on imports of wine and spirits, the Covid crisis, harvests decimated by heatwaves and hail, Russia’s war in Ukraine increasing costs by a third and a dramatic slump in sales at home and abroad.

Bordeaux’s grand cru wine exports to China fell to their lowest in a decade a year ago. According to a report by the Bordeaux wine council earlier this year, exports of the region’s wine to China have halved since 2017. Beijing also imposed a 32.2% customs tax on many imports of wine-based spirits from the EU in July. Only three major French companies, LVMH, Pernod Ricard and Rémy Cointreau were exempted from the duty.

The president of the Aude winegrowers’ union, Damien Onorre, told Le Monde: “For three years, we have suffered droughts and heatwaves of over 40C. I have lost 50% of my production over this period. The Aude has seen its wine production almost halve to 2m hectolitres [200m litres] over the last three years.”

Fabre met the agriculture minister, Annie Genevard, on 6 November to outline the industry’s demands and hopes these will result in measures at the crisis meeting on Monday.

Among the winemakers’ demands is compensation for ripping up vines. Under a plan introduced last year, 27,000 hectares (67,000 acres) of vines have been uprooted with compensation of €4,000 (£3,500) a hectare, and Fabre says another 35,000 hectares could go. In Bordeaux, 12,000 hectares of vines have been destroyed under a similar scheme.

The money would also be used to distill unsold wine into biofuel. The winegrowers also want to call on the European crisis reserve, which Portugal benefited from last year to fund a distillation programme, but French winegrowers say their appeal has gone unanswered.

Le Monde reported a survey by FranceAgriMer, the national body overseeing food and drink production, that found 20% of French winegrowers were considering shutting their business, leading to the loss of as many as 100,000 jobs. France’s wine and spirits industry has an estimated €92bn turnover a year and is one of the country’s three main industrial sectors, with aeronautics and luxury goods, directly or indirectly employing more than 440,000 people.

The National Association for Agriculture Employment and Training described it as a “pillar of the economy and a source of jobs”.

Monday’s meeting at the ministry comes on the eve of the International Exhibition of Equipment and Expertise for Wine Production to be held from Tuesday to Thursday in Montpellier.

Fabre, a fourth-generation wine grower in the small southern village of Fitou near France’s border with Spain, produces 80,000 bottles a year at his Domaine de la Rochelierre. As the president of the independent winemakers’ association, he represents 17,000 members.

“This is the last chance. People are in a fighting mood but getting to the end of their tether. They either get support or they will have to shut,” he said.

“We’ve never before had such a series of crisis as we’ve had over the last five years. It’s not because we’re not making good wine and it’s not due to one cause but our cash reserves are now depleted and without them we cannot survive.”