European Central: France Overwhelmed By Wine Surplus
Jan Hakan Dahlstrom
Citizens have grown accustomed to shortages of products during the pandemic, yet France has been struggling to deal with a surplus of one good in particular. French vineyards have been producing a lot of wine without enough clients to buy the entire supply. This is not good news for the world’s second-largest wine producer. Depending on the year, France’s wine industry is worth between 7 and 9 billion euros.
The French government plans on spending money to turn the wine into industrial alcohol that can be used for pharmaceuticals and cosmetics. In order to produce industrial alcohol, it is possible to take wine or beer and through boiling and condensing it is possible to separate the alcohol. First, it is necessary to heat the wine in order to collect the alcohol vapors. As alcohol has a lower boiling point than water, it is possible to collect the alcohol vapors before the water boils. After collecting the alcohol vapors, they are cooled down in order to be condensed back into a liquid state.
While this may be unusual to the typical person living outside of France, this would not be the first time the French government did this. France did the same during the pandemic when the demand for wine fell dramatically. Wine sales however have still been declining and red wine saw a fifteen percent decrease in sales during 2022. If no solution is found in order to maintain wine production at its current level, between 100,000-150,000 jobs may be lost within the next ten years. As industrial alcohol is less lucrative than selling wine, this measure can only be used in the short term in order to prevent vineyards from closing immediately. If wine sales do not improve, job losses are inevitable.
Bordeaux's Wine Woes
Looking at Bordeaux, France's largest wine-growing region, the situation is grim. Bordeaux farmers think that the French government has not taken enough action. Instead, Bordeaux farmers think that some vineyards will have to stop producing wine in order to solve the problem. While the costs of producing wine increase, prices are falling due to an excess in supply. Bordeaux vineyards are meant to serve the wine needs of a bygone era. Shortly after World War II, the French drank 150 liters of wine each year. Nowadays, the French drink only 46 liters of wine annually. The region of Bordeaux has been producing 480 million cases of wine in the past 5 years, yet only selling 440 million cases. Some vineyard owners would prefer financial assistance to help them grub the vines in order to stop the excess production of wine. Instead of spending 160 million euros to convert wine into industrial alcohol, the French government could spend only 100 million euros to help farmers grub some of their vines. Grubbing is the term used to refer to farmers uprooting grape vines.
While it may seem to make sense to farmers in Bordeaux, the problem is that this is not currently permitted by the European Union. While farmers can grub the vines, France as a member state of the European Union is not permitted to subsidize the cost of grubbing to the farmers since 2008. That year, the Common Agriculture Policy of the European Union was reformed and no longer permits member states to subsidize the cost of destructing land currently used for farming. Grubbing a hectare currently would cost a vineyard in Bordeaux 2,000 euros, and the estimate is that 100,000 hectares in Bordeaux should have their vines removed. Unless these French farmers can convince the European Union to change the Common Agriculture Policy, they will have to pay to repurpose the land themselves. This will be a difficult task for vineyards already in financial trouble. In Bordeaux alone, around 1320 vineyard owners already are struggling to keep the vineyards from going under. Over a third of these owners are already earning less than it costs to continue to operate their vineyards.
Using Wine In Other Products
One company has attempted to solve the oversupply of wine in Bordeaux by mixing wine with rum in one drink and gin in another. Charles & César is a local company that aims to create trendy drinks. Their rosé cocktail includes rosé, gin, and grapefruit while the blanc cocktail is a mix of white wine, extract of lime, and rum. Both cocktails are 10% alcohol and Charles and César gave both a retail price of 3.95 euros. Charles & César has also been working on modernizing wine labels to appeal to younger consumers. This includes a less visible appellation (an indicator of geographic origin) and not putting a chateau name. While Emily in Paris may have come up with the idea of sprayable Champagne, vineyards across France need to come up with creative ways that may seem a tad insane to use up the excess wine stock. While they may not want to be wasteful and encourage people to pour wine on each other, they could potentially scale up partnerships with other agricultural products such as wine-infused cheese. but anything is worth trying at this point in order to increase the consumption of wine. Spraying champagne is not a novel idea either as it has been done since 1966 in Formula 1 races, yet reintroducing a trend can make a product popular again. As vodka sauce is a spin on tomato sauce and is widely available throughout the United States in supermarkets, Bordeaux vineyards could potentially look into creating wine-infused tomato sauce.
We live in a world that is constantly evolving which unfortunately means very little remains the same for long. The French drinking less wine than in the past presents a challenge to vineyards that have been accumulating excess stock. Without concrete solutions found sooner than later, vineyards will be left in the past.
