L‘General Association of Wine Production (AGPV) brings together all the professional structures of the sector (AOC, IGP, cooperatives, independent winegrowers, interprofessions), as well as the FNSEA and young farmers. Suffice to say that its president speaks in the name of all viticulture. Cooperator in Haute Gironde and president of the Tutiac cellar, Stéphane Héraud was therefore logically at the head of the national delegation which has just been received by Annie Genevard, Minister of Agriculture.
On the program: the crisis. “No one imagined that she could be so deep. We came to ask for help from the public authorities. “And the manager to continue:” collapse of consumption, unsold stocks, increase in production costs, geopolitical instability and climatic hazards, winegrowers are caught in the throat. »»
Stéphane Heraud: “The stripping effort must be accentuated to balance the supply and demand for wine in Gironde. »»
Stéphane Lartigue/Sudouest
“Collapse of consumption, unsold stocks, increase in production costs, geopolitical instability and climatic hazards, winegrowers are caught up in the throat”
The main subject put on the table was that of uprooting. For the past two years, the strategy chosen by professionals and public authorities has indeed drastically reducing the supply to stick to a request that never ceases to dive, in France as in export. While the 2024-2025 campaign is coming to an end and the harvest is approaching, the time is therefore a general report.
Historic bleeding
In Gironde, the largest wine department in the country, bleeding is historic. First, via a regional uprooting plan launched in 2023, and financed by the public authorities and the Interprofessional Council of Bordeaux wine (CIVB), which contracted a loan for this, knowing that having one hectare snatch by an entrepreneur costs around 1,500 euros. In total, 1,800 files were submitted and 7,200 hectares torn off, against a bonus of 6,000 euros per hectare.
“Bordeaux has embarked on this policy and the other vineyards followed, because the whole country is affected,” recalls Stéphane Héraud. A plan, this national time, is therefore made in 2024. The government released 109 million and 5,400 French winegrowers file a file in order to tear down a total of 27,400 hectares, against a bonus of 4,000 euros per hectare. This plan, being deployed, will be adjusted in the coming weeks. Within it, the Girondin winegrowers were committed to 5,400 hectares.
“Bordeaux has embarked on this policy and the other vineyards followed because the whole country is affected”
Bordeaux is therefore losing 12,600 hectares against the payment of bonuses. “It would be necessary to snatch as much in the next two years,” said the president of the AGPV. “The stripping effort must be accentuated to balance in Gironde the supply and demand for wine. A shock ad. Knowing that the boxes of the state are empty, one of the objectives of the meeting in Paris was to find funding. The looks are turned to Brussels where, within the framework of the common agricultural policy (CAP), funds are intended for the support of streams in difficulty. “But it will be necessary to negotiate hard with the Member States,” says the cooperator.
Voluntary uproot
The awarded uprooting is not everything: hundreds of winegrowers snatch without help in order to keep control over the future of their land. Awarded uprooting indeed implies constraints on the subsequent use of plots. Each destroyed there, freely, the most complicated plots to enhance: frosty zone, mediocre terroirs, old unproductive vines, grape variety unsuitable for the type of soil, uprooting red to plant white. On large properties, some thus destroy dozens of hectares at once.
On this component, the Gironde destroyed 6,200 hectares, to be added to the 12,600 hectares of award -winning tearing. This gives 18,800 hectares striped from the card in two years, an 18 % suppression of the surface of the vineyard. By way of comparison, the only Médoc covers 15,000 hectares. The projections estimate that 85,000 hectares will be collected in 2025 in Gironde. It was 123,000 hectares twenty years ago in 2005.
Helped distillation
Two other measures are put forward to reduce the volumes put into market. First, a distillation to destroy wines in stock. The harvest is approaching and cellars are full. This radical provision, with payment of aid, already used in recent years, would this time be coupled with final uprooting: could only distill the one who tears off. Another device: temporary uprooting. The producer tears off, touches a bonus (2,500 euros per hectare) and will be able to replant a few years later, when sales resume. For these two measures, it will also be necessary to find funding.