The reasons are numerous, but generational difference is key. Among retirees, wine consumption is barely changed: people in their sixties and seventies grew up with wine on the table at every meal. For them, wine remains part of France’s patrimoine, or cultural heritage. But they are, in the way of all flesh, dying off. And, some argue, failing to induce wine appreciation in the young. Those between 18 and 35, meanwhile, are more likely to be drinking water at the table, and beer at the bar (beer accounted for 39% of the expenditure on alcohol among French people aged under 35 in 2021. Wine just 27%.)
Denis Saverot, editor of La Revue des Vins de France magazine, blames “our bourgeois, technocratic elite with their campaigns against drink-driving and alcoholism, lumping wine in with every other type of alcohol, even though it should be regarded as totally different”. French TV and cinema is currently running a government message not to toast health — “Sante!” — with alcohol since alcohol is unhealthy. (“La bonne santé n’a rien à voir avec l’alcool”.) Official messaging is working: according to a poll by the Ifop institute, 27% of French people intended to participate in Dry January this year, although you’d be hard-pressed to find one of them in a French winegrowing region. Nicolas Carreau, president of the Blaye Côtes de Bordeaux appellation, told regional daily Sud-Ouest, “we are for limits and reasonable consumption”, but “Dry January contributes to smashing our culture”.
But looking at the sorry state of the industry, an older French wine-lover might experience déja vu. Because the sector has been in crisis since the Sixties, what with the decline in drinking and the rise in New World wines. What saved French wine last time was China.
Pouring into the market for Bordeaux after the 2008 global financial crisis, Chinese consumers soaked up the flood of plonk that no one else wanted. But no longer. French wine shipments to China dropped by nearly 30% in 2022, a shift led from by the elite: the CCP, as part of its anti-corruption drive, has instituted rules on the amount that can be spent on alcohol at state functions.
And it’s not just wine they’ve stop buying. For the decade after 2011, the Chinese were the top foreign investors in Bordeaux vineyards, buying around 170 chateaus. Now they are only conspicuous by their absence, following capital controls by Beijing intended to keep domestic currency within China’s borders, and sustain the yuan. (The failure of Chinese managers to understand the French worker’s absolute commitment to a max 35-hour week did little for harmony in the vineyards.) Symbolically, the gates of the Chateau de Grand Branet, owned by Chinese conglomerate Dalian Haichang Group, are locked with a rusty chain.
Other major markets for French wine are also turning up their noses at the stuff. The UK has been successfully wooed by the cheap, easy-drinking wines of Australia, South Africa, Chile and Argentina. More to the point, British wine is booming. And the French — incroyable! — are investing in it. Henkell Freixenet, Pommery and Tattinger have all bought vineyards in southern England. America, meanwhile, has implemented tariffs and discovered it has no taste for the bottom half of Bordeaux’s production barrel, although it remains an outlet for “fine wines”.
But for how long? To offset the decline in domestic consumption, French winemakers niftily moved upmarket during the 2010s, selling expensive wine abroad — the Saint-Emilions, the Margaux, the premiere cuvées. This shiny wine bubble, which diverted attention from the structural problems in the industry, has now burst, courtesy of inflation and the cost-of-living crisis. Winemakers’ hopes of forever increasing the price on the label have a firm cork in them.
The French wine industry may be over a barrel, but it is not dead yet. Some winegrowers are shifting wholesale to eco-friendliness. By 2025, 100% of winemakers in Bordeaux will have some form of organic or sustainable certification, or be transitioning towards getting one. This is a good bet, since the data on French wine consumption when mined suggests that remaining drinkers are looking to buy better wine, and are more “engaged” with their choice.
Meanwhile, the bigger chateaux have already diversified into wine tourism —which, pre-pandemic, was welcoming more than 24 million enthusiasts every year. Certain destinations are enhancing the experience with some of the most expensive art installations in Europe: Provence’s Château La Coste has pieces by Louise Bourgeois and Tracey Emin, plus a “railcar” sculpture by Bob Dylan. (Yes, that Bob Dylan.)
All well and good, but no salvation for small wine producers like Jean-François in the here and now. They are calling on the French government to subsidise the pulling-up of vines in Bordeaux’s less prestigious areas to the tune of €10,000 per hectare, with about 10,000 hectares going to the digger. Officially, member states of the European Union are prevented from releasing funds for grubbing-up, but never underestimate the French ability to fudge and evade the rules. (The European Commission once memorably allowed France leeway on its budget “because it is France”).
The vignerons also have expectations of President Macron, a celebrated, self-avowed oenophile who drinks two glasses of wine a day, one with lunch and one with dinner. The Revue du Vin de France named President Macron “personality of the year” in 2022. He picked up his award in person, telling the audience: “You are the masters of an art which allows us to shine around the world.”
While my neighbour Jean-François waits for the politicians, he continues to prune his vines under the grey skies of Southwest France. He is gritting his teeth, preparing for another year of financial loss. Another bitter harvest.
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