‘It’s like your house going up in flames’

• Frank Renout

  France correspondent

In the region around Bordeaux these days the vineyards are literally being cut to the ground. Grape vines are pulled out of the ground and destroyed by excavators day after day. The reason: the winegrowers can no longer keep their heads above water.

In total, around 1,200 wine growers around Bordeaux have registered to have their grape vines removed with a subsidy. This concerns 8,000 hectares of vineyards that are disappearing. An unknown number of farmers have started grubbing without subsidies. It is estimated that around 10 percent of the total number of vineyards in the region will disappear.

It produces a bizarre image. Bordeaux used to be one of the most prestigious wine regions in the world. Now in many places there is only a bare landscape to be seen, with plowed pieces of land and uprooted grape vines thrown into large heaps. “Then we set them on fire. That’s the cheapest way to get rid of them,” says winegrower Jean Renaud (55).

Renaud is one of the hundreds of winegrowers who have decided to reorganize. “In 2018 I had 84 hectares of vineyards. During corona I already got rid of half, then there was still 40 hectares left. And I now have almost half of them grubbed up. There is no other option, the problems are too great. “

Renaud points to declining wine consumption. The French have started drinking more than 30 percent less wine in ten years. And there is also shrinkage elsewhere. “I sell 80 percent of all my wine abroad, mainly to China. But since 2018, wine imports from China have plummeted. I have not lost any customers, but they buy much less. And so do my French customers: they used to buy two boxes wine and now only one box.”

There are more problems for French wine growers. Partly due to declining consumption, the prices for a bottle of wine have fallen considerably and so have the incomes for the wine grower. Climate change causes bad harvests. For example, there is frost in the spring and extreme drought in the summer. And last year, winegrowers near Bordeaux also struggled with a devastating plant disease, downy mildew, milidiou.

Large vineyards with high prices and a lot of cash in hand can take a beating. But the smaller wine producers with low prices and small margins are now under pressure.

There are 750,000 hectares of vineyards in France. That is 100,000 hectares too many.

The problems are not only in Bordeaux. Two of the largest interest groups recently made an emergency appeal in the daily newspaper Le Monde. France makes too much wine, they say.

“There are 750,000 hectares of vineyards in France and that is 100,000 hectares too many,” Samuel Montgermont of Vin & Société, the federation of national French wine organizations, told Le Monde.

“We must urgently produce less wine and only make the wine that we can sell,” said Bernard Farges of the CNIV, the national organization of wine merchants.

Winegrower Jean Renaud walks among the grape vines and watches as an excavator sinks its teeth into the earth, pulls out the plant and throws it aside. And then the next plant, and the next. The entire site is being cleared.

“When I look at it, it brings tears to my eyes,” he says. “It feels like your house is going up in flames, like you’re losing everything. But there’s no other way.”

He will use the subsidies for grubbing up to eliminate his deficits and get his company back in order financially. “And then I try to make a new start with my downsized vineyard, with the grapes that remain and that generate the most money.”

Is he hopeful? “I still have a few years until retirement. We’ll see.”