French winemakers in crisis talks
France’s agriculture minister has pledged to inject more money into the promotion of French wines as vintners brace for a new dilemma: a bumper harvest.
Herve Gaymard, after a crisis meeting with winemakers yesterday, announced plans for a 50% increase in public funding just two days after his ministry warned of a sharp increase in French production.
On Monday, the ministry forecast that France will produce 5.66 billion litres of wine in 2004 – or 20% more than last year, when production was hit by a record-breaking heat wave that scorched Europe.
But for an industry that’s already overproducing, a good harvest can be bad news.
“On the one side, we’ve got a market that’s shrinking, and then – in France at least – there’s a potential production that’s very high,” said Roland Feredj, director general of the Council of Bordeaux Wines.
How to improve cooperation between France’s thousands of small vineyards and simplify their message abroad was one of the questions being discussed at the ministry yesterday.
Global prices are already depressed by an oversupply of up to six billion litres a year on world markets, Feredj said. If matched in Spain and Italy, this year’s expected production increase in France will only worsen the situation.
According to figures published yesterday in financial daily La Tribune, the value of French wine exports fell 10% in the first five months of the year compared to the same period of 2002.
Exports also fell compared to 2003, seen as an atypical year because of the heat wave and a lucrative sell-off of Bordeaux wines made in 2000.
Wines from places like Chile, Australia and California overtook French wines on global export markets for the first time in 2003. France exported 1.78 billion bottles whereas so-called New World vintners exported 1.93 billion.
Not all the French vintners’ problems lie overseas. Wine consumption has been falling steadily for the past four decades in France, where the average person over 14 now drinks just a quarter-bottle a day, compared with a half-bottle in 1961.
