Saint Sulpice de Faleyrens vineyard, February 5, 2024. SEBASTIEN ORTOLA/REA
Will French cars soon be running on red wine? The question isn’t as far-fetched as it might first appear. The idea of converting wine into bioethanol is currently under study. Although no one knows whether it will succeed, it does illustrate a way forward for the French wine industry, which is faced with a crisis of overproduction and is seeking to eliminate its surpluses.
“Structurally, we have between 4 million and 5 million hectoliters in excess, distributed mainly in the biggest red wine-producing areas, from Bordeaux [southwest] to Languedoc [coastal south], via the Rhône Valley [south],” said Jérôme Despey, a winegrower in Saint-Géniès-des-Mourgues, in the southern Hérault region, and first vice-president of the French National Federation of Agricultural Holders’ Unions.
To explain this overflowing of vats, some people point to the decline in wine consumption in France. This is not a new phenomenon. The decline began at the turn of the 1970s. Since then, the volume of fermented grape juice consumed by the French has almost halved, falling from 46 million to 24 million hectoliters by 2023, according to data from the National Interprofessional Committee for Wines with Designation of Origin and Geographical Indication (CNIV).
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