More trouble for French wine this week, as a major cooperative faces the financial music.
© Barbara/Pixabay | French wine has been getting hit from all angles and this week is no different.
When a major wine figure makes the news saying the likes of châteaux or classifications or vintages are obsolete, you know a Bordeaux wine merchant is trying to sell you a new wine.
Cue winemaker Stéphane Derenoncourt telling the above to French broadsheet Le Figaro this week, as he hawks his new Bdx Le Jus (Juice) wine – a 50/50 blend of Merlot and Cabernet Franc – from the wider Entre-deux-Mers area (not the white-only appellation, of course).
“Why not accept that the château, the grand vin name, the vintage, tannins, oak aging and all forms of imitation of a failed grand cru belong to a
bygone era?” Says the marketing blurb.
Meanwhile – and still (primarily) in the wider Bordeaux region – France’s wooden wine box companies (the companies that make the wooden boxes that all our annual First and Second-Growth purchases come in when the truck drops them off) have come together to form an association. The Alliance France Caisse Bois (AFCB) has been founded in order to increase awareness around wooden wine boxes and to combat some negative press.
“It’s a carbon-eating product because wood stores carbon and we work with a negative carbon footprint,” the head of the association (and head of the Caisserie Marie-Louise box-maker in Beychac-et-Caillau based midway between Bordeaux and Libourne). “But our product is not recyclable so we get penalized, all while being renewable, reusable, and entirely natural.”
Meanwhile, here are some of the other headlines you might have missed this week:
Buzet co-op in dire straits
The Buzet cooperative winery Les Vignerons de Buzet in France’s South West has gone into administration with a reported €36 million in debt. Similar to filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in the US, the winery went to court on Tuesday in what is officially known as “une procédure de sauvegarde” (“a protection procedure”).
“Less cumbersome and restrictive than the legal recovery which follows a bankruptcy filing, it nonetheless indicates worrying financial health,” said local newspaper Sud-Ouest, which reported the company had €18 million in short-term debt and “over €35 million” debts in total.
“In five years, the debt has increased from €4 to €36 million,” the winery’s lawyer told fellow publication La Dépêche on Wednesday.
The company is seen as one of the more progressive and successful cooperative cellars in France.
“How did […] one of the flagship companies of Lot-et-Garonne, find itself in this dramatic financial situation […]? Asked La Dépêche. Numerous reasons were given in the reports, including business acquisitions, the current state of the wine market at home and performance of the former board of directors.
Indeed, the situation is further complicated by a hearing under way at the regional employment tribunal in which the former head of the organisation is seeking nearly half a million euros in a payout following his dismissal at the beginning of the year. Although such a payout would represent more than the current cashflow of the business, the crux of the matter appears to be a simple calculation of supply and demand.
“No, the real problem is that we produced more than we knew how to sell,” one anonymous member of the cooperative told La Dépêche. “Producing 90,000 hectoliters (9 million liters) when you’re selling 50,000 (5m liters) – that poses a major problem.”
The company has been taken under the wing of the court for a provisional peroid of six months.
In the interim, the winery’s roughly 135 grower-members are reportedly staring down the barrel of a vine-pull scheme, while it is understood that some financial institutions may forgive portions of the debt.
“At a human level, I fear the worst,” said Maître Dejean, the cooperative’s lawyer. “Some winegrowers are emotionally on edge given they are the Cellar’s creditors.”
Mildew worries hit the Rhône
Curiously absent from the growing season headlines across France recently (see Bad Weather Hammers French Vineyards), the Rhône has not sidestepped the mildew headaches facing growers in nearly all regions this year.
“Not a plot of Grenache without mildew in the Southern Rhône Valley” was the Vitisphere.com headine this week. The French wine news website said that the application of sprays prior to a heavy rain spell across the first week of April had been the deciding factor in fighting mildew in the area. Those that missed the window soon saw outbreaks mildew.
Further rain events in mid and late May added to the disease pressure. According to the report, Rémi Vandamme, a wine advisor for the Vaucluse Chamber of Agriculture, has seen mildew in all the plots he has visited “from Châteauneuf-du-Pape to Valréas”.
“I believe we’ve lost 100,000 hectolitres [10m liters] of Côtes-du-Rhône, Côtes-du-Rhône Villages and [Côtes du Rhône] Crus,” winegrower Xavier Tronc told the publication. Tronc says the disease pressure is worse than that of 2008 and 2018.
Although there are reports of mildew affecting Carignan, the bulk of the disease pressure is primarily contained to one variety in particular.
“All Grenache varieties are showing symptoms [of mildew],” said viticulture consultants Mélanie Choppin and Mathilde Joumas at the Cooperative Wine Institute (ICV). “Other varieties are faring better. The situation is not out of control, but it is not under control either.”
However, the vintage is far from decided and winegrowers are looking to the drying northern wind – the famed Mistral – to halt the spread of disease on the vines as the region enters the deciding months of the growing season.
Ventoux extends appellation
Still in the wider Rhône, and the Ventoux appellation has reportedly expanded its vineyard area to include two neighboring communes. According to French wine news website Terre et Vins, Velleron and L’Isle-sur-la-Sorgue (boasting a potential 20 and 60 hectares of vineyard, respectively) will boost the Ventoux appellation from 51 to 53 communes on the eastern fringes of the southern Rhône.
Although the news came out this week, the official amendments were rubber-stamped by France’s legislative body back in November 2023. The changes had been in the offing for over a decade.
Other changes include the promotion of Vermentino and Viognier from “accessory” to “principal” grapes for the appellation’s white wines. They join Bourboulenc, Clairette, Grenache Blanc and Roussanne as top dogs (these alone, or as as blend must form the majority of a Ventoux white) while Marsanne is limited to no more than 10 percent of plantings.
The changes are reportedly not aimed at increasing production, merely “regulating it”, according to Marie Flassayer, head of the appellation.
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