“A l’heure actuelle, le Bordeaux coûte moins cher qu’une bouteille de vinaigre”
“Many people will commit suicide.“In the Entre-deux-Mers, the despair of the winegrowers is such that some confess to having”dark thoughts“. Faced with the malaise and after the mobilization in Bordeaux in favor of the award-winning uprooting
, the prefecture of the Gironde brings together this Friday a crisis unit bringing together the services of the State, the region, the department, a collective of winegrowers, the interprofession, the chamber of agriculture and the Agricultural social mutuality. People around the table to try to save the largest AOC vineyard in France (110,000 ha) and try to avoid a wave of human tragedies.
“We have become the dairy farmers of viticulture, we are going to die”says Patrice, 58, who cultivates 49 ha of vines near the coast of Saint-Macaire. “There would be 500 blocked bank accounts and between 3,000 and 4,500 recovery files still at the MSA out of 5,200 winegrowers in the Gironde! It is a huge economic disaster that is brewing.”
“My wife works, she’s the one who fills the supermarket trolley”
“At present, if you go to supermarkets, Bordeaux costs less than a bottle of vinegar, we are at around €1.60 a bottle of Bordeaux. This is what Bordeaux represents!“Fourth generation of winegrowers, Jacques, 57, owns about forty hectares in Sauveterrois. He is ready to give up the pruning shears.”Many of us are going to be left out.“
“The crisis cell has its uses for those who are really, very badly going“, believes Marie-Claude, winemaker with her husband Frédéric in Saint-Félix-de-Foncaude. “I know winegrowers in severe depression. They are at their wit’s end. Some have mortgaged their houses which they have paid for for 30 years to make short-term loans to the bank.“
The conversion? “I’m not going to turn my cellar into a barn”
Track reserved by the Bordeaux Wine Interprofessional Council
(CIVB) to get out of the crisis, reconversion seems”very difficult” for Jacques from Entre-deux-Mers. “Given our topology, we have clay-limestone soils, no irrigation system, so cereals, we must forget. Breeding? You around you, there is no more breeder. Tree planter? It’s for future generations, it takes 25 to 40 years to cut a tree. Now is when we need help. Tomorrow everyone will be gone, it will be too late.“
“Who benefits from the crisis?” ask Marie-Claude, Frédéric and Patrice. “Some get richer and some get poorer. It is not possible to make offers to buy Bordeaux at €650 per barrel when production costs are between €1,000 and €1,500.“.
The interprofessional? “They forgot us”
These Entre-deux-Mers winegrowers do not hide their anger against the trade and the interprofession. “The CIVB is always the same people in a game of musical chairs. We have an interprofession headed by a merchant, even if the board of directors is equal (with the winegrowers), their lack of vision is such that one wonders what they are doing, and we must not forget that they these people are paid graciously.”
In a market where the bulk price is collapsing, the parallel accumulation of contributions and charges crystallizes Patrice’s resentment. “We pay the union, the CIVB, the Federation of great wines, the INAO, the chamber of agriculture, the ADAR (Agricultural and Rural Development Associations), then all the environmental certifications that we are asked to have, HVE, Bio, etc., you have to pay the technicians, the application fees, you have to pay the audits, etc., etc., etc. All this for what ? To sell bottles at €1.50 on shelves? Cheer !”